Disciple Hour: Exodus 24:1–8 The Old Covenant Ratified
Exodus 24:1–8 The Old Covenant Ratified
24 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. 2 Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.”
3 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.” 4 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. 5 And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. 6 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. 7 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.” 8 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.”
1. Moses the Mediator (24:1-2)
24 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. 2 Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.”
In order for a covenant to go into effect it must be ratified. Ratified means the agreement or covenant is officially accepted by both parties. God has put forth His requirements and how they are to be applied and lived out in the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21-23). The Israelites affirm the Covenant by saying, all the Lord has commanded we will do.
Here, God commands Moses to come up the mountain again to worship Him. It’s hard to keep track of how many times Moses ascended the mountain, but when he did, he represented the people as their Mediator. He was the man between heaven and earth. He held our hand and as it were, God’s hand and spoke to God and to us. Moses spanned from a holy God to sinful man.
Here as Moses ascends the mountain again, he does not do it alone. Now that the Covenant is being put into place, God tells him to bring Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and the 70 elders that Moses had appointed to help him govern Israel.
Again, the Lord set boundaries. Moses can approach Me, God said, but all the other smust not. They had to stay back where God was a little safer. Only the Mediator could come into God’s presence.
God had set boundaries to show everyone that He is holy and must be feared. He is a great and awesome God perfect in righteousness. Mankind can only approach God on God’s terms and the way He prescribes. We cannot approach God on our terms.
For us, here are the terms…
1 Timothy 2:5 (ESV)
5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
We approach God through our Mediator, the Lord Jesus or not at all.
2. Moses Reads God’s Word to the People (24:3-7)
3 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.” 4 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. 5 And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. 6 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. 7 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.”
Moses, the Mediator, was vital to the Israelites. We see in verse 3 that after hearing from God, he told the people all that God said. He spoke God’s Word to them as he recounted all God told him. Then we’re are told, that he wrote it all down. Ancient covenants were always written down so the parties could refer back to them. Here, God’s covenant was the same. They had a written record exactly what the Covenant was. Moses was the Covenant Mediator between God and the people.
Moses builds a place of worship, an altar upon which the sacrifices would be offered to God. Once they received God’s Word, they worshipped Him.
The passage tells us that Moses took the blood from the sacrificial animals threw half against the sides of the altar and the other half he placed in basins. All the blood belonged to God the half thrown against the altar was the half dedicated to God.
Then Moses reads the Book of the Covenant to the people. After he read it, the people in unison…
And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”
We appreciate their optimism and I’m sure they were sincere when they agreed to God’s terms. However, the reality is none obeyed. Every single Israelite broke God’s covenant.
3. Moses Throws the Sacrificial Blood on the People (24:8)
8 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.”
The people were covered by the blood of the sacrifice. The blood that was shed because the people could not keep the Old Covenant was shed for them. This would be a continual practice in the Tabernacle and then later in the Temple. This practice would go on for centuries. Israelites would live and die under the OC.
It was the blood of the covenant that would remind the Israelites that breaking God’s Word meant death. God would mercifully allow the death of an animal to substitute for their death. While this was true and was the practice, the Israelites still needed to exercise faith and truly love God. When they began to simply go through the motions, then God would justly turn His wrath toward them in exile and death.
God’s relationship with His people would be maintained by the shed blood of the sacrificial animal. Notice that the blood was sprinkled on both parties. So, the Covenant was a blood relationship.
Even in the OC there was so much grace shown by God. As the people truly tried to obey but failed, God graciously provided a way for their sins to be covered as He provided the sacrificial system for them.
You see God knew that the people agreed to something they could never keep. It was far beyond their strength to obey. Sin causes good intentions to fall infinitely short. When God’s people sinned the covenant blood would be available to them.
Notice, by the blood they bound themselves to God’s covenant and by that same blood there would be the covering and forgiveness of sin.
4. The New Covenant
Israel’s experience at the base of Mount Sinai is very valuable to us. It teaches us how to have a right relationship with God. Like Israel, we too stand in the presence of the Holy God who requires our obedience and worship or death. The reality we don’t do any better than they did. We may leave here with great intentions. We too are very optimistic when it comes to obeying God…we too say along with Israel, all that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.
Like Israel, we must enter into the Covenant by the blood of the Sacrifice. We learn that blood has always been the means for a relationship with God. Like with Israel, salvation comes by the blood of the substitutionary sacrifice.
Often when the Bible speaks about Jesus it uses terms like blood, substitute, sacrifice etc.
Romans 3:21–26 (ESV)
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Ephesians 1:7–8 (ESV)
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight
Ephesians 2:13 (ESV)
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Hebrews 9:19–28 (ESV)
19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
The New Covenant has for its foundation the Old Covenant. All God required from man in order to be His people is found in the Old Covenant. As He gave the commandments and the people repeatedly gave in unison the affirmation that all God has commanded, we will do. Multiple times we find this dynamic in the Book of Exodus.
We learned from the Ten Commandments and their application God’s character. So, His desire for His people is to be His and exhibit His qualities. There is a major flaw in our make-up, sin is rampant and we are Totally Depraved because of the Fall. Sin keeps us from obeying God like He wants us to and like we want to. So, the Old Covenant has a major issue, our sin. Total Depravity does not mean that we are as evil as we could be but it means that our complete person is tainted with sin. As a result, we like the Israelites may say, all that God commands we will do. However, we never make the first step in obedience before we disobey. As hard as we may try, it is completely impossible for fallen man to obey God the way He requires.
So, we say, the Law of God cannot save but only condemn, it only has the power to show sin not to forgive sin. Its value is that it shows us who God is by revealing His holiness. It shows us our sin and how desperately we need a Savior.
We do have a Savior who also said, All You have commanded, I will do. Jesus, our Lord lived out God’s commands for us perfectly, the way God required. He lived a perfect sinless life. He of His own choice, went to the cross to die a sinner’s death (the death we should have died). Because He is God’s Son (divine and eternal) and because He was sinless even though He died, the grave could not hold Him, Jesus rose again on the third day, just as He said He would.
The Old Covenant was spoken first to Abraham when God said that through your offspring all the families of the earth would be blessed.
Genesis 12:1–3 (ESV)
12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
When God gave the Law at Mount Sinai His people needed a Savior and so do we.
Romans 4:13–25 (ESV)
13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
16 That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. 18 In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
The New Covenant was ratified by the Blood of Christ just as the Old Covenant was ratified with the blood of the lamb.
It is through covenant that we are connected to God relationally.
