Exodus 24 - On the Mountain with God

All right.

The Ratification of the Mosaic Covenant

So Exodus chapter 24 is an extremely important chapter because this is the moment where the Mosaic covenant or the covenant of the law is ratified in that Moses tells the people all the words that the Lord spoke, they agree to the terms.

There's basically a ceremony, Moses builds an altar and the people get sprinkled or splattered with blood. Don't you wish you were there? So the old covenant, basically it's now official. Sometimes we think of maybe chapter 20 as where it's official, but no, it's right here.

So this chapter starts out in an interesting way. Look at verse one, it says, now he said to Moses and you might ask, okay, who is he? Because if you keep reading, if it's the Lord, then the Lord is referring to himself or talking about himself in the third person.

Of course, the last chapter, the Lord was talking and that rolls right into this chapter. So it gives the impression that it's the Lord speaking but then he tells Moses go up before the Lord. So it sounds like maybe it's not the Lord.

So it's either the Lord, or as we talked about last time I think the angel of the Lord, this could be Christ or the angel of the Lord speaking, but either way look at verses one and two. Now he said to Moses, come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and 70 of the elders of Israel and worship from afar.

And Moses alone shall come near the Lord but they shall not come near nor shall the people go up with him. So once again, we're seeing this picture of God as being the Lord is unapproachable. Okay, the Lord is unapproachable.

God is here, the people are here and Moses is permitted to be in between basically. Moses is the mediator. Yes, Jim.

Type of Christ.

What?

Type of Christ.

Right, right. Moses is a type of Christ. Because Jesus is the mediator of what? The new covenant. Moses is the mediator of the old covenant. So he's the go-between. Some are given this grace to come up with Moses and worship from afar, the 70 elders, as well as Aaron and Nadab and Abihu, who we're gonna read about again a little later on, those are interesting characters.

But these men and the 70 elders of Israel, I think we're starting to see that there's a hierarchy of leadership, isn't there? Moses is on top. Moses is the undisputed, unquestionable leader. And then below him are Aaron.

And then it's gonna talk about Joshua is his what? His assistant. So you might look at Joshua as being leader in training. You know, he's kind of following Moses around. We know that when Moses dies, who takes over?

Joshua becomes the leader of the nation and ends up leading them into the promised land. And so there's a hierarchy of Moses and Aaron and then Nadab and Abihu and Joshua. And it goes down from there to the 70 elders.

And then there's leaders amongst the tribes and everything else. Look at verse three. So Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord in all the judgments. So we have to remember that the 10 commandments, I said, are kind of like the headline and they can be expanded upon from there.

So God said a whole lot more than just the 10 commandments. The people hear it. Everything we've talked about over the past few weeks and more, I'm sure. And it says in verse three, the people answered with one voice and said, all the words which the Lord has said, we will do.

They might live to regret those words, but they've agreed. They've agreed to the terms. So everything now is official. Just like to read from Matthew Henry's concise commentary. I find that he has many good insights.

Matthew Henry writes about this. A solemn covenant was made between God and Israel. Very solemn it was, typifying the covenant of grace between God and believers through Christ. As soon as God separated to himself a peculiar people, he governed them by a written word as he has done ever since.

God's covenants and commands are so just in themselves and so much for our good that the more we think of them and the more plainly and fully they are set before us, the more reason we see to comply with them.

What is it in the song? The law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul. I think the first time people hear some of the things written in God's law, it's kind of a reaction against it because it's condemning you.

I'm guilty of this, I'm guilty of this, or some of it to a lot of Christians today. The law seems harsh to some people, but the more you look at it, the more you set it before you, the more you study it, the more you see the wisdom and you say, you know, if we just did things more this way, there might be a few things you wonder about, but the law of the Lord is perfect.

So if we read the law and we think there's a problem, the problem's with us, not God's law. Now there's something we read about in verse four that might strike you kind of funny. Because last time we talked about the Israelites going into the promised land.

When they were to go in, they were to break down the monuments in the pillars. And what's Moses doing here? He's setting up pillars. He sets up 12 for each of the 12 tribes of Israel. So the question, a little bell went off in my head.

Okay, why break down the pillars of the heathen than just to set up pillars of your own? Because in the King James version, if you have the King James version, you might've noticed last week that the pillars of the heathen are, it's translated their images.

So it gives the idea that the pillars were actually idols. I don't know that that's necessarily true, but why was it okay to set up pillars for Moses to do it, but the heathen pillars had to be broken down?

Who wants to?

Yes, Larry.

Ebenezer, stone of remembrance.

Okay, so that's what the Israelites were doing.

Right, yeah, they were setting up. So as they pass by, whenever they pass by, their sons and daughters could ask, hey, what's that for? Well, that's because what God did.

So that's a stone of remembrance versus pillars erected to serve foreign gods. Okay, so a big difference.

Dad.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. The pillars were not to be worshiped by Moses. That was not the intention at all, to worship at the feet of any of these pillars.

Right, right.

You have anything?

Yeah, just to expand on what they're thinking is that the pillars of Egypt are all Egyptian deities of God, evil spirits. Most of the pillars of 12 tribes of Israel are God's people, not to be worshiped, but to be recognized as God's people as a community.

Yeah, even in Egypt, I don't wanna get too off topic, there's the obelisk or that pillar that, you know, the Washington Monument is actually based off of old pillars they found in Egypt. And I think they actually took one of the pillars in Egypt, which almost certainly was erected to a foreign god, and I think they brought it to Rome and erected it in Rome.

And of course, nations have been copying that ever since. So that's just an interesting fun fact for the day. But if you drive through the town of Leveret in Montague, maybe you've noticed there are stone pillars.

You ever see these massive rocks, they just kind of jet out of the ground, you notice that? Now, why people do that, I don't know. Maybe it's just for decoration. I suppose it looks kind of cool, but the heathens in Bible times set them up for the worship of false gods.

So obviously the Israelites, when they come into the land, hey, you got to break all these things down. But yeah, like Larry said, when the Israelites set up pillars, it was to remember that this is an important site.

So when somebody comes through, hey, there's the pillar, and they can tell the descendants what God did. Here, Mount Sinai, this is where God established his covenant with the children of Israel. So more of a remembrance.

Remember Jacob in Genesis 28, that story of Jacob's ladder, where he saw the staircase with the angels ascending and descending on it, the Lord stood above it. And he named that place Bethel or Bethel, meaning house of God.

He set up a pillar and he poured oil on it. So just to mark the site. And this is a very important site right here. Any questions or comments so far?

Okay. Okay.

And because of this, again, because the covenant is established right here, it says verse four, and Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. And he rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes of Israel.

Then he sent young men of the children of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins. And half the blood he sprinkled on the altar.

Then he took the book of the covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, all that the Lord has said, we will do and be obedient. And Moses took the blood and he sprinkled it on the people.

And he said, this is the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you according to all these words. So back in the ancient world, when you made a covenant, that covenant was made official through the shedding of blood.

You remember the Abrahamic covenant, God put Abraham to sleep and he had taken those animals and cut them in half and put them on either side and God put them to sleep and the burning torch walked through the midst.

So that was a blood covenant. This is a blood covenant. And of course, the new covenant is a blood covenant with the blood of Christ. I think it probably seems strange to some people when they read this that Moses would sprinkle the blood on the people.

You can imagine them all standing around and he takes something and he's just, I'm sure it seems strange, right? I think it probably also seems strange to some people if they, let's say somebody off the street comes into a Bible believing church for the first time and they hear Christians singing about how we are washed in the blood.

Imagine hearing that for the first time without any context at all, a bunch of people singing about being washed in the blood of the land. That would seem a little odd if you didn't really know what was going on.

So thankfully for us, the blood metaphor, it is a metaphor. Like we're not actually washed in the blood. Well, the Israelites, they did get sprinkled with literal blood, at least some of them. So what does the blood represent?

This is easiest question of the night. What does the blood represent here in Exodus 24? If you get this wrong, you haven't been paying attention the past year or whatever. Yeah, it represents the blood of Christ, obviously.

So it's important that God teaches the nation this, reinforces this idea with the blood so that all those years later, 1500 years later, when the Messiah actually comes, there is a frame of reference for the shedding of blood being necessary.

And I've said this many times, the new covenant makes no sense without first understanding the basics of the old covenant. So there had to be a frame of reference. People had to understand the concept of sin and sacrifice.

Hebrews 9 .22, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. So I repeat this often, but in the day and age we live in, I don't think it can be stressed enough, quite frankly, that the New Testament cannot be rightly understood without first understanding the Old Testament.

Because I think the problem with most modern evangelicals,.

Or maybe not most,.

But many modern evangelicals, just want to make things simple and kind of reduce everything down, boil it all down to love, right? This is what a lot of churches are doing these days, kind of move past some of this and just want to focus on love.

God is love, and that's all they want to talk about. Now, in fairness, Jesus in Matthew 22 did summarize the commandments and the whole law and prophets by love, right? What did Jesus say? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

That was his summary of the first half of the 10 commandments. In the second half, he summarized by saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So that is true. But the Bible has more to say than just that.

When Jesus summarized the commandments or the Old Testament law and prophets as being about love, remember, a summary is exactly that. It's a summary. It doesn't undo everything that God said. Your Bible is made up of two thirds.

Two thirds of it is the Old Testament. So God's law still has its place. The Old Testament, despite what teachers like Andy Stanley say. So if any of you listen to Andy Stanley and you don't know what the problem is, I'll come and talk to me afterwards.

But him and a lot of others, they want to detach from the Old Testament. And to hear them talk, they almost sound embarrassed by it. So the Old Testament, the law has its place in the church because the Old Testament scriptures, they were the doctrinal foundation, even the moral foundation for the New Testament church.

Anytime you read through the New Testament epistles, Paul and Peter, they're always quoting the Old Testament as their source of authority. They had authority in and of themselves as apostles, but they were always going back and quoting from the Old Testament.

All right, any questions on that?

One thing that I noticed in this, in verse four, is Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. And I think that was an important thing because now it wasn't just left up to everybody's memory about what was said to Moses.

Now they have a document which Moses wrote out, because they adulterated that, they came up with their own definitions of everything that was written in the law. But that was a written document that actually reaffirmed the covenant.

Okay.

Anybody else?

Dennis.

This reminds me of Jesus with the disciples and he told them, I will bring to your remembrance everything I said to you. That must have been amazing. It's no wonder the gospels could be written and so on.

Yeah.

All right, so the people being sprinkled with blood, that blood is the picture or a picture of the blood of Christ. So when we talk about being washed in the blood or we are cleansed by the blood, that's just another way of saying, we've accepted the free gift of salvation through faith in Christ and his death, burial and resurrection.

But you have to understand God's system of justice first, which is found here and other places here in Exodus 24. Okay. Now starting, we're gonna move on to a different subject. Starting in verse nine, we come to a rare, this is a rare thing.

I think it's fascinating. It's an occurrence where it just comes right out and says, they saw God. I was listening and there's no emphasis on it. And they saw God, he just kept reading. I'm like, wait, let's stop and think about this.

This seems like a pretty big thing. They saw God. So the New King James Version titles this section starting in verse nine, on the mountain with God.

Don't you wish you were there?

Seeing God on the Mountain

All right, look at verse nine. Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and 70 of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel. And there was under his feet, as it were. Okay, notice that as it were a paved work of Sapphire stone.

And it was like the very heavens in its clarity. So it doesn't say that's what it was. He's trying to describe what he saw. I probably can't do it justice. Verse 11, but on the nobles of the children of Israel, he did not lay his hand.

So they saw God and they ate and drank. I just wanna ask Moses 100 different questions about this. But you know, this is all the information that he gave. How many of you wish he gave a little more? Now as to exactly what they saw, it's dangerous to speculate.

Well, I think this is what, you know, we need to be careful and not go outside the bounds of scripture. But there are a few questions that came up, at least in my mind. Number one, and I know the answer to this, okay.

But does this contradict other statements in scripture that seem to say the opposite, that no one's ever seen God. Here it's just, they saw God.

And lived.

And lived, yeah.

Well, they lived, so. So does this contradict other statements in the Bible? Number two, if not, because as Bible believers, we know the answer is no. But if not, then how do you explain this? And then number three, what exactly did they see?

Can we go to other passages, compare scripture with scripture to get a little more insight? We can't make stuff up. We can't just speculate. But we can go to other passages where you see something similar.

Maybe add a few details based on what else is in scripture. All right, so the first question, John, you can just make a note of this. We're not gonna look them up. John chapter one, verse 18. And first John 4, 12.

Both explicitly say that no man has ever seen God. When we get to chapter 33, that's going to be the account where, remember Moses says to the Lord, show me your glory. And that's when the Lord takes Moses and puts him in the cleft of the rock.

And he passes by. And Moses, it says, saw God's back. What does that mean that he saw his back? And basically the Lord tells Moses, no man can see my face and live. So that's the key, I think, to understanding all of this.

So when the scripture says that no man has ever seen God, that's true. No man has ever seen God directly. No man has ever seen God face to face. In eternity, this is the believer's greatest reward, that in eternity we will see what theologians call the beatific vision, where we shall see God's face.

Now here they're describing what was under his feet and it was glorious what was under his feet. So what must it be like to see his face? Well, there's no way the human mind could begin to understand that.

Revelation 22, verse four says, they shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads. You know, eternal life in and of itself is not the reward because eternal living forever without God, that's not life.

I know it talks about the damned as being dead, but they are conscious and they're living forever. That's not a reward. God is the reward. Being in his presence, seeing his face is the reward. So this statement that they saw the God of Israel really is perfectly in line with these other passages that no man has ever seen God that is directly seeing his face.

John MacArthur writes about this. He says, speaking of Exodus 24, they were privileged to have seen God without being consumed by his holiness. Precisely what they saw must remain a moot point and must stay within the description given, which focuses only on what was under his feet.

This indicates that perhaps this is only a partial manifestation that took place or that the elders in the presence of the divine majesty did not dare raise their eyes above his footstool. I tend to think of it that way, that they saw this and it was, yeah, they wouldn't dare, they couldn't look up.

All right, let's turn to Exodus, or excuse me, Ezekiel chapter one. We get a little more information about this in Ezekiel one. Of course, there's another passage. I think we looked at it two weeks ago in Revelation chapter four, where John sees the vision of heaven, God's throne room.

And he describes a little bit about what he sees. He sees God on the throne. John describes these bright colors. There's a rainbow before God's throne. There is a sea of glass-like crystal. Moses describes that under his feet, it was, as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone, which would be blue.

It was like the sky, like the heavens in its clarity. So maybe like a translucent blue color. But in Ezekiel one, we see something similar. So the prophet Ezekiel, he sees this vision of the angels, and then he sees a vision of God's throne.

Look at Ezekiel one, starting in verse 26. And above the firmament, over their heads, that's a reference to the angels, was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like a sapphire stone. So you see there's that connection.

On the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it. That's an interesting statement. Also from the appearance of his waist and upward, I saw, as it were, the color of amber with the appearance of fire all around within it.

And from the appearance of his waist and downward, I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire with brightness all around, like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day. So was the appearance of the brightness all around it.

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And I just hope that we can all appreciate this. And it's really hard to put it into words. They're doing the best they can. It's like this, as it were, like this.

But I just wanna look at that statement, what is it, verse 26. Talking about the throne. On the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it. So it's like the appearance is on the throne, but he's high above it.

I'm not exactly sure how to make sense of that. The man, or the appearance as a man, one would assume this is the pre-incarnate Christ. Since in Colossians 2 .9, it says that in him, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.

So turn back to Exodus 24. Does anyone have anything to add to this? Okay, there's a few more connections between Ezekiel 1 and Exodus 24. Ezekiel says that there was fire all around, and this was the appearance of the glory of the Lord.

We see something similar in Exodus 24, 16, and 17, which we'll read in a moment. But when you think of the glory of the Lord, we've already saw it. It's like a cloud, right? Was it Ezekiel who mentioned like a cloud, a rainbow and a cloud on a rainy day?

So there's something about the cloud and the glory of the Lord. How many of you have heard of the Shekinah glory, right? We've heard this term, the Shekinah. Some people don't care for that term because you don't actually find the term Shekinah in the Bible.

And I just will say this, that there are some weird writings and beliefs, even some blasphemous. So I don't know if Shekinah is a legitimate term and pagan culture have corrupted it. So not everybody accepts the term, the Shekinah glory, but usually it's spoken of in reference to this cloud,.

The glory of the Lord.

Exodus 24, verse 12, look at it. It says, then the Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain and be there. And I will give you tablets of stone. This is the first time we read about the actual tablets and the law and the commandments, which I have written that you may teach them.

God has already given the commandments. Now he's mentioning the tablets of stone, also called the tablets of the testimony, verse 13. So Moses arose with his assistant Joshua and Moses went up to the mountain of God.

And he said to the elders, wait here for us until we come back to you. Indeed, Aaron and Hur are with you. If any man has a difficulty, let him go to them. So who's Moses leaving in charge? Aaron and Hur, by the way, spoiler alert, this doesn't work out so well, but he learns the lesson, don't leave Aaron in charge.

Aaron isn't exactly the leader that Moses is, but we'll get to that eventually. Verse 15, then Moses went up into the mountain and a cloud covered the mountain. Now the glory of the Lord rested 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. So you can just picture Moses waiting. He's waiting for instruction. Verse 17, the sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel.

So once again, this portrays to the people God's unapproachable nature. Yet Moses, the mediator of the old covenant, patiently waits to be invited into God's presence in the cloud. And once he does, he remains there.

He remains on the mountain with God for how long? 40 days and 40 nights. You've probably noticed this. This is a number that gets repeated often. There's something about the number 40 in the Bible, right?

The Israelites are in the wilderness 40 years. It rained 40 days and 40 nights in the flood. Yep, Noah's Ark, yep. And Jesus being after his resurrection, he was on the earth 40 days. Tempted in the wilderness, 40.

So there's something about the number 40 and I believe that it represents a time of testing. Certainly Jesus in the wilderness was tempted, tested in the wilderness. So I think that's what's happening here.

The Israelites have to go 40 days without their leader. This is a time of testing for the children of Israel. How do they do?

You can't blame all of them.

They fail. They fail the test. And what does that prove? Once again, all throughout the Bible, this is the main message of scripture. Mankind fails. God is holy. We aren't. God is righteous. Mankind isn't.

And the whole scripture is God remedying. Is that a word? But God remedies that problem. In verse 18, so Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain and Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights.