In Exodus 24, God commands Moses to gather the people and worship at a distance, and Moses offers a sacrifice and reads the Book of the Covenant aloud. The people respond with a promise of obedience to the Lord’s commands. This chapter serves as a reminder of the holiness of God and the difficulty of being obedient to His commands. It also serves as a reminder of what the people of God learn in worship and fellowship and how we can be faithful to God in our lives of faith today.
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Transcript
00:00:00:19 – 00:00:23:34
Clint Loveall
Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Hey, just a reminder, as we get started, this will be the last day for us for a while. We will be off the rest of this week and all of next week. And so we apologize. Michael and I have some schedule stuff that doesn’t line up. And so it’s just to be honest, we just feel like we do a better job of this when we’re both here at the same time.
00:00:23:54 – 00:00:44:22
Clint Loveall
And so we’ll we’ll go on hold and we apologize about breaking it up like that. But that’s what that’s our plan. So we press on today. With Exodus moving to Exodus 24, I think we’ll probably try to cover this chapter today. Again, this is not one of those places of probably devotional. We see this, we have seen this.
00:00:44:22 – 00:01:10:28
Clint Loveall
And we will continue to see this in the book of Exodus. So I think in Genesis two, though, the characters changed more often and so maybe it was less noticeable. There are these moments built into the story where we everything okay where we are. We have these moments built into the story that are kind of recommitment, moments that are kind of worship moments.
00:01:10:48 – 00:01:33:46
Clint Loveall
And we have one of those today. God tells Moses, Gather all the people and come and worship at a distance. This is verse, verse two, verse one. There Moses alone shall come near. I’ll just read bits and pieces of this. Moses came and told the people the words of the Lord. Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.
00:01:33:46 – 00:01:57:59
Clint Loveall
He rose early in the morning. He built an altar. He sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings. Verse six Moses took half the blood of the offering and put it in basins and half the blood. He dashed 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.
00:01:57:59 – 00:02:30:41
Clint Loveall
We will do and we will be obedient. Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people and said, See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance to these words. So some interesting things here in terms of offering, in terms of the kind of consecration of the people. This is very much a pattern of what’s going to continue to happen later down the Old Testament when the Ark of the Covenant is is made is given to the people, There is this same kind of pattern.
00:02:30:52 – 00:03:01:19
Clint Loveall
We’ve seen some of this already with the idea of the blood on the door post, and it is the blood of an offering. Interestingly enough, there is a sin offering the guilt offering where the blood of a lamb is poured onto a goat, and then also from the people, the idea that it carried the sin. So the idea of sacrifice and blood, though that seems very foreign and outdated to us, is a common practice in the Old Testament and important practice on the Old Testament.
00:03:02:00 – 00:03:27:34
Clint Loveall
And I think again, Michael, one of the things that may be curious to us because in our tradition, in our faith tradition, we make such a strong case of the idea that God has come near to us, that Jesus has come to us, that we draw close to God. I mean, this is language that Christians use frequently. And yet here we have this language of distance.
00:03:27:34 – 00:03:57:14
Clint Loveall
We have this language of caution. Don’t let the people come too close. Only Moses can come. There is this danger. You’re in treating God casually. And I think, you know, while that may seem foreign to us, I think that there’s something there that is a helpful reminder of how the people see not only their relationship with God, but how they see the holiness of God.
00:03:57:36 – 00:04:22:35
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. And I think that in some ways, Clint, because of our emphasis upon the closeness of God, the law along our now 2000 years of Christian history, where we have time and time again insisted upon this word incarnation, the theological word that describes God taking on flesh, that nearness actually being a physical nearness that the Creator entered the created space.
00:04:22:53 – 00:05:12:57
Michael Gewecke
Because we’ve emphasized that and we built our entire hope and faith upon that. We naturally have come to a place where that is our fundamental assumption. The danger of that is we come back into the Old Testament and we begin judging the Old Testament by that standard. And the reality is Jesus was not known. Jesus was not recognized by his own because of how large of a divergence his teaching was, that when Jesus proclaimed that he was God, he was, in effect, coming and rewriting texts like this one where we see to your point here, Clint, that Moses alone in verse two shall come near the Lord Moses alone post Jesus, post the revelation of
00:05:12:57 – 00:05:36:12
Michael Gewecke
God taking on flesh. You look in a book like Hebrews, Jesus is the ultimate high priest because of his both His offering as the priest and him himself being the offering. We as Christians believe that we too can come near the Lord. We could not make sense in our own theological tradition of Moses as the only one. But we shouldn’t just pass by.
00:05:36:12 – 00:05:57:05
Michael Gewecke
I think we should take a pause and note that this is why Jesus was missed. This is why the Pharisees argued sold to him gently against him. Their chief charge against him of heresy was because they were looking from this framework, from this covenantal framework for this understanding of this reading of texts like this in the Old Testament.
00:05:57:21 – 00:06:30:00
Michael Gewecke
The second thing, and just very briefly, I want to make mention of here as we start this text, is the importance of these worshiping moments, the periods of time where the people of Israel pause, they reflect upon what God has done in this case, we have the giving of this particular set of laws, this agreement of what God expects of the people as his covenantal people, and then they look ahead towards what it means to be the kind of people to be devoted to those commands, to be obedient to them.
00:06:30:00 – 00:06:57:50
Michael Gewecke
And I think it is impossible. I think it’s absolutely impossible to not read this text without some level of awareness of the foreshadowing. Verse seven The end all that the Lord has spoke broken. We will do and we will be obedient. And I think on its surface this is an a heartfelt expression, a genuine expression that the people desire to follow God.
00:06:58:06 – 00:07:24:52
Michael Gewecke
On the other hand, the writers and editors of Exodus, that the text that’s been given to us makes it very, very clear, as this story continues, how much the people struggle to be obedient. And so here, having received such specific guidelines, and then to see this promise from the people at a moment of worship, a moment of encountering the goodness that God has given, they are moved to be obedient.
00:07:24:52 – 00:07:48:43
Michael Gewecke
And yet we know that they will struggle mightily to be obedient and thus not just to criticize the Israelites. I think it is on some level to learn the spiritual lesson in our own hearts that we too will have mountaintop experiences where we are moved to obedience. But if we’re honest, we too, at many, many stages daily struggle to be obedient along the way.
00:07:48:45 – 00:08:09:03
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it’s. It’s fitting. Michael, you used the word promise because promise and covenant in the Bible are the same word. It’s a different translation of the same word. And it says here the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in other words, the Israelites aren’t just, you know, saying, We’ll try to do something and then they fail.
00:08:09:21 – 00:08:37:24
Clint Loveall
They are making a covenant. God is offering them a covenant sealed in blood, and they are saying, we’ll keep this covenant. And so then they don’t keep their word. Later on they break the covenant. They don’t just break good intentions. They don’t just, you know, break their plans. They break a sacred agreement, the sacred bond, a promise. The word covenant also means promise here.
00:08:37:44 – 00:09:01:04
Clint Loveall
And so that’s not to say that they’re not genuine here. I think this is, you know, in the context of worship. I believe that they mean these words, but unfortunately, they won’t live up to them. And the Bible takes their failure to do so incredibly serious, as we will see when those stories come up.
00:09:01:17 – 00:09:26:15
Michael Gewecke
Well, yeah, it takes it very seriously. And I think maybe in a even more affirming way for me, it tells it in an honest way. You know, I think one of the things about scripture and I’ve said this before, so I’ll be brief, but one of the things about the scriptural witness that is most compelling to me personally is that when you read it, it includes the hard stuff.
00:09:26:33 – 00:09:46:37
Michael Gewecke
When you come to tell your family’s story to someone, when someone asks you, you know, hey, tell me about your family, you don’t lead with the whole story. You lead with the highlights that, you know, sort of top points. And that’s not necessarily being dishonest. It’s just about presenting that story. But when you look at the scripture, it’s not deifying these people.
00:09:46:46 – 00:10:32:27
Michael Gewecke
This isn’t the word for it would be hagiography. It’s not giving people credit that they don’t deserve. It tries to be very honest sometimes. It’s brutally honest about the people’s inability to follow God and ultimate Ali. It portrays to us that while the text may seem to be about Moses, while it may seem to be about Aaron, where it may even seem to be about the people and their struggles to be faithful to God, actually underneath all of that, these are characters playing on the stage of God’s story that this is telling God’s commitment to God’s people, God’s thoroughgoing perseverance, to bring them in to a new land, even a land that isn’t deserved, even
00:10:32:27 – 00:10:54:59
Michael Gewecke
a land that God will be faithful to bring them to, despite the fact that they will fail to be obedient to the best of their intentions. That is the Old Testament preface. I think if the first example Jesus maybe comes unexpectedly in this way, the Old Testament I think, prepares us for Jesus because it’s fundamentally a story about grace.
00:10:54:59 – 00:11:17:36
Michael Gewecke
It’s fundamentally a story about the God who shows up in that encounter. Each and every time and says, You get another chance, do it again. Wake up and be faithful to the covenant this day. So I think that there’s a beautiful tension in that. I think the text is honest in a way that both reveals the humanity of the people and the centrality of God in this story.
00:11:18:34 – 00:11:43:12
Clint Loveall
I think that maybe in some ways something like this is less obvious in a book like Exodus, But there really is a sense in which if you read the old Testament, it is a kind of love story and the perspective that we see less of, or maybe that seems less natural to us is it’s the story, the love story of the love God has for the people.
00:11:44:00 – 00:12:21:16
Clint Loveall
God continues to chase these people who continue to break his heart, who continue to turn away. And yet God comes even in the midst of anger, even in the aftermath of punishment, again and again to them to offer them another chance. And it is easy to focus on the sinfulness and the fallen ness of the people. But I think what you shouldn’t miss in that context is this repeated effort on God’s part to bring the people back to himself.
00:12:21:45 – 00:12:45:23
Clint Loveall
And even, you know, you see that this is wonderfully woven into some of the books of the prophets where God will rail against the people with threats and and, you know, prohibition signs and pronouncements. And then God will, in almost poetic language, talk about how he misses them and how he weeps over them and how they’ve broken his heart.
00:12:45:23 – 00:13:07:22
Clint Loveall
And I think, you know, those two themes are brought together really well in these kind of stories. And I think we see some sense of it in this chapter. Michael. I mean, we we haven’t gotten to a lot. We’ve seen some doubt, we’ve seen some grumbling. We haven’t gotten to a lot of unfair awfulness or or outright disobedience yet.
00:13:07:44 – 00:13:28:37
Clint Loveall
And yet, in the midst of that, we have this wonderful moment of worship. And then I just want to go through the rest of the chapter very quickly. I just want to highlight a couple of things. Moses takes some people up the mountain with him and, you know, verse 11 here, God did not lay a hand on the chief men of the people you might remember before.
00:13:28:37 – 00:13:50:49
Clint Loveall
It was only Moses who could come near him. Here. There are some others who come, and the Lord says to Moses, Come to me on the mountain and wait, and I’ll give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandments. So Moses sets out with Joshua and he tells the elders, Wait here. And then verse 15 here, Moses went up the mountain and the cloud covered the mountain.
00:13:51:16 – 00:14:07:58
Clint Loveall
The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day, he called the Moses out of the cloud. 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. Moses entered the cloud and went up the mountain.
00:14:08:16 – 00:14:37:22
Clint Loveall
Moses was on the mountain for 40 days. There’s also in verse ten, a very strange reference that under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphires, like the very heaven for clearness. And so the the high dollar church word for this kind of thing in the Bible is called the ofany it. It it’s when God makes a physical appearance and it always has clouds and fire and smoke and sometimes earthquake.
00:14:37:46 – 00:15:06:32
Clint Loveall
And it is a dramatic moment. This this is a moment where all of Israel looks to the mountain and they know with certainty that the Lord is present and that Moses is with them. And we we do want to note, because there’s going to be a lot in between this and the next real part of the story. Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights, which is not just a literal term in the Old Testament, 40 always means a period of struggle.
00:15:06:52 – 00:15:26:18
Clint Loveall
So whenever you see 40 days and 40 nights, whether it’s the rain or whether it’s Jesus being tempted, it not only tells you something about the length of time, it tells you something about what’s happening in that time. And we’ll need to come back to this when we get to about chapter 32 and we pick up the story there.
00:15:26:54 – 00:15:57:19
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. So one of the things that this section of the story does for us, I think, is it disabuse us of the idea that life would be easier if our faith was all physical, if everything that we did was a direct response to the truth that we saw and that we touched. Of course, we have in the New Testament the example of like Thomas, who took seeing Jesus touching Jesus to believe.
00:15:58:19 – 00:16:21:23
Michael Gewecke
But I think, you know, that classic Sunday school question, you know, that you asked kids, you know, what would it take for you to believe it would be so much easier to believe if I could just see Jesus, I could just touch. I think it’s striking to me that here we’re told that the chief man of Israel, the leaders of Israel, the people of high repute, they beheld God.
00:16:21:23 – 00:16:53:58
Michael Gewecke
And then, you know, they celebrate, they feast, eat and drink. This is the the context of celebration in a fellowship. But the point here being in seeing God, they encountered this high and beautiful moment. And yet these are the same people who are going to miss the mark substantially, not just in future books, but within this book. And there is something I think deeply freeing in the recognition, Clint, that as humans seeing isn’t believing.
00:16:53:58 – 00:17:24:09
Michael Gewecke
And I think that, you know, John would make a case that we believe on the testimony of the witnesses of who Jesus was. I think as we look at a text like this, we discover that those mountaintop experiences can be powerful moments of faith formation. They can truly change our life. Let’s not make any mistake about that. But simultaneously, they don’t in some way undo the necessity of daily discipleship, of the belief that we live out each and every day.
00:17:24:09 – 00:17:54:07
Michael Gewecke
That is a task unto itself that demands our attention and respect. And so when we come to a text like this, I think it’s easy to read it because it’s fantastical, it is spectacular. Maybe even it’s one of those texts that you wish you were there for. And that’s good to imagine that. On the flip side, there is a spiritual lesson, I think, in offer, in stories like this one, where we’re reminded that being there wouldn’t make faith easier.
00:17:54:19 – 00:18:04:08
Michael Gewecke
Being there wouldn’t make your obedience more sure. Instead, we’re called to follow and we will discover how the story plays out when we gather back together in the week and a half.
00:18:04:28 – 00:18:37:53
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I mean, to your point, Michael Aaron is with Moses and Aaron is going to be a part of a pretty significant failure of the Israelites in just a little ways down the story. So yeah, but well said. I think you know the other just quick last word is these texts are good reminders of us that to us, the kind of help us see the danger maybe in getting too familiar or too comfortable with the idea of God.
00:18:37:53 – 00:19:08:45
Clint Loveall
I mean, as as God’s presence is described, it is awe inspiring. It is, I’m sure, for the Israelites, a little bit frightful. The idea that there’s fire and there’s smoke and there’s power and there’s glory. I mean, I think the what’s the phrase here? A devouring fire on top of the mountain, that lest we be tempted to get too comfortable with the idea of who God is.
00:19:08:45 – 00:19:15:28
Clint Loveall
Yeah, these texts remind us, Hey, you get God is not something to take lightly.
00:19:15:30 – 00:19:42:27
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, because mountains inspire, majesty. They lift us out of ourselves. Imagine seeing the mountain cover. There’s smoke and fire. I mean, yeah, that image is perfectly said. All right, Well, thanks for being with us. We will see you when we continue the study in just a week and a half. Thanks.