THROUGH THE BIBLE - Exodus 2..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Exodus chapter 24. This is the Word of God.

Let's read it with careful attention and with reverent hearts. 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. Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him. 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.

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 12 pillars, according to the 12 tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw 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, we will do, and we will be obedient.

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. Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They beheld God and ate and drank.

The Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain and wait there that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction. So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. And he said to the elders, Wait here for us until we return to you. And behold, Aaron and Har are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them."

Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. Then the glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered six days. And on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the mist of the cloud. Now 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 on the mountain.

And Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. Amen. This is the word of God. Now, brothers and sisters, we said last week that we had a very important portion of this book of Exodus. And let's try to cover this now.

Chapter 24. in a brief manner. I said to you last week that the words that were finished in chapter 23 were those words of the book, as he calls it here, the book of the covenant that were given to us in chapter 20, 21, 22, and 23. These are all the things that were given to Moses from the mouth of the Lord that then were going to be given to the people of Israel. But now here in chapter 24, these words are the words of the Book of the Covenant.

We have the establishment of the covenant, if you want, or the ratifying of the covenant, or the beginning of the covenant. This covenant that God is going to do, God, the Lord God of Israel, with His people, Israel, is going to be established, is going to be confirmed in this section here. And I want to take you through the narrative because there's very important components. The narrative starts saying to us that the Lord, after saying all of these things to Moses, he announces to Moses that he's to come up to him. And now we have more characters involved in this story.

If you see in verse 1, now it is not only Moses, but the Lord is telling Moses to come up near to him or to him with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu. Now, this is going to be very important, brothers and sisters, because Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and I hope that that's the pronunciation of those names. Those three people are going to... Aaron is going to be the priest. The priestly system has not been established yet, but these are going to be the priests of Israel and Nadab and Abihu are the sons of Aaron.

So now the ones that are to come to the presence of the Lord is not only Moses, but also Aaron and Abihu and Nadab, who are going to be the priests. But not only them, also we are told that 70 elders are to come with them to the presence of the Lord. And now these 70 elders are those who represent the people of Israel. This is very important, brothers and sisters. However, in that verse, in verse 1 and verse 2, we have a distinction that is made.

Moses, who is the intermediary of this covenant, the one who has been speaking with the God of Israel, is the only one that is allowed to approach near to the Lord. We are told in the end of verse 1 that these other people were to worship from afar. They were supposed to worship from afar. But it's Moses, the one that is called to be with him, to come near to the Lord. Now, keep that in mind.

It is only Moses, the one that is meant to approach the Lord near, and the other ones are going to worship from afar. Having that in your mind, then it comes the narrative of the establishment of the covenant. Now, brothers and sisters, be with me. Because the first thing that Moses is going to do is that he is going to bring the people of Israel to a verbal confirmation of the things that he had received from God. In verse 3, we have a verbal confirmation.

And when I say verbal, that means that comes from the mouth of Moses. There's an agreement, a confirmation. Moses is telling the people of Israel all the things that he had received from the Lord. He tells those things. And then the people of Israel, it says, with one voice, that means with agreement, they say, we will do what the Lord has said.

These are all the words that the Lord has spoken. We will do. There is a confirmation, an agreement to the words that the Lord had given to Moses. But Hebrews says that for a covenant to be inaugurated or for a covenant to be established, there is the need of blood. So the verbal confirmation, the utterance of the mouth of the people of Israel in saying, we will do those things, was not sufficient to establish the covenant in which the God of Israel was entering with them.

So then there's going to be the ceremony of the establishment of this confirmation in which blood is going to be an important element. That's what we have in verse four. Then we have Moses rising up very early in the morning. And what he's going to do is that he's going to go to the foot of the mountain, and then he's going to build this altar. And this is going to place these 12 pillars or these 12 stones that represent the whole people of Israel.

And after that, he's going to select the men, the young men for them to offer sacrifices. He's following the instructions that the Lord had given him in Exodus chapter 20 of how to present or how to build altars. There's a ceremony that is taking place from those offerings. Then Moses is going to take half of the blood and then he's going to throw that blood onto the altar. After that, when he has thrown the blood onto the altar, then he is going to write, or he has already written these words, it's not a verbal confirmation anymore, but he has actually written down, we are told in verse 4, he has written down the words of of the Lord and the rules of the world, that is the Ten Commandments and all of the other rules that were given in the previous section.

He has written that down and he's going to come after he has thrown the blood to the altar. He's now going to present this to the people of Israel. He's going to read again the words of the Lord. And the people of Israel will reply again in a confirmation of agreement. So then we are told that they say, Behold, we are going to do as the Lord has said.

We are going to obey those things. And Moses throws the remaining part of the blood onto the people. He throws the blood of the sacrifices of the animals Brothers and sisters, just imagine the picture of blood being thrown onto you, to the establishment of a serious covenant. Blood, it is the representation of death. Death is the thing that was in the mind of all of these people.

If we break the covenant, then the punishment for that is death. There is an establishment of a covenant. Brothers and sisters, we are told here now in verse eight, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words, the blood that this is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you, a covenant has been established. A covenant has been inaugurated by the shedding of the blood. Now, pay attention to these brothers and sisters, because then remember that in verse number 1, we had Aaron and his sons and the 70 elders not able to approach with the nearness that Moses was able to approach.

Then we have a glorious word in verse 9. It says, then. Then, after the covenant has been established, after the covenant has been made, after blood has been shed, after the people has come, not only in a verbal agreement, but they have been witnesses of all this ceremony that the Lord is performing through Moses. Now, after the community of the people of Israel have agreed to the terms of the covenant that are now not in the mouth of Moses, but they are written by Moses himself, it says, then, Moses 9, Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and the 70 elders of Israel went up. Brothers and sisters, these are the benefits of an established covenant.

These are the benefits of a covenant that has been inaugurated by the legal requirements of the Lord, that now these people who were not able to approach... Remember in Exodus 19, remember with the smoke of the Lord and the mountain, and he says, take care that you might not even come to the edge of the mountain, because if you come to the edge, or if you approach the mountain, then you're going to die. Now we have that after the shedding of the blood of these animals, now the people that were not able to approach the Lord, now they are coming up to the mountain. But not only that, if you continue reading in verse 10, it said, And they saw the God of Israel, after the shedding of the blood, after the establishment of the covenant, These people were not only allowed to come closer in the mountain, to the mountain of the presence of the Lord, but they also saw the God of Israel, the Lord God of Israel. There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone, like heaven, it says, like the very heaven of clearness, and very important, and he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel.

These presence, they entered into the presence, but brothers, now with the establishment of a covenant, they did not only have access to the presence of God, but they also could commune with Him. If that is a word that you have in English, so you can enter into communion or fellowship with Him. In the end of that verse, it says, they beheld God and ate and drank. They ate and drank in the presence of the God, who a few days before was unapproachable. They would have died if they approached that God.

But now they are not only in the presence of this God, they have seen a manifestation of this God. Not the fullness, not the completeness, but they've seen a manifestation of this God. And now they are eating and having communion or fellowship among them. These are the benefits, brothers and sisters, of a covenant. that has been established.

But we need to ask the question, why? Why all of these benefits and a covenant that has been established by the sharing of the blood of animals? Are we going to think, brothers and sisters, that the blood of these animals was necessary to change, to transform the mind of God? That before He was unapproachable and that now with the shedding of the blood of these animals, now He is approachable. Is the blood of animals sufficient?

Is it enough? for sinful people to approach the perfect and holy and pure God of the universe that is not only the God of Israel, but the God of everything that has been created. And the answer to that is no, because the value of that blood was nothing. It was what that blood was pointing to and the reality of what that blood was actually communicating that had the value and that had the power to make sinful men approachable to God, to give them permission to be And in the presence of God and brothers and sisters, the blood of these animals was pointing to the blood of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. The Lamb of these animals was only a gospel instrument that was pointing to the one that was going to come, the blood of the one that was given actually access.

to the people. And this is very important because what we have here, brothers and sisters, is the establishment of a covenant that is a covenant that required obedience. It's a covenant that required works. It's a covenant that required that the people will remain in the works of the covenant for them to remain in that presence, in that communion with the Lord. Why?

Because these two that we have here, Nadab and Abihu are the ones that in Leviticus chapter 10 present a strange fire to the Lord. And they are consumed by the power of the Lord. They died in the presence of the Lord because they have presented a strange fire. The ones that had access to the presence of the Lord, together with the 70 elders representing the nation of Israel, together with Aaron and all of the priests and Moses. died because they did not did things according to the covenant.

Brothers and sisters, praise to God for Hebrews, because the Hebrews, the book of Hebrews says that this is just a shadow, is a type, this covenant of the blood of these animals is just a type, is a shadow of a A better covenant, a covenant that is not established upon the shedding of the blood of animals, but is established upon the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the blood of the Beloved of the Father that establishes the new covenant. And then you see what Paul says in Romans chapter 5 verse 1, that having been justified by faith, We, the Christians, or those who are in Christ, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And not only that, but we also have access to that grace of the presence of God. And in that grace, we stand, we remain in the grace of the presence of God.

But Paul does not only say that, he says something that is connected with the last section of this chapter, because brothers and sisters, if Moses had written down the terms of the covenant already. Now it was necessary that the God of the universe, who was the other party of this covenant, would also come and write down the terms of that covenant in tablets of stone. So then Moses, the intermediary, we're told in the last section of the chapter, will come to the immediate presence of God and he's going to abide with Him for 40 days. But there's something very interesting that is said in verse 17, it says, Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord, that is the manifestation of the presence of God, the God of Israel, to Moses, not with Aaron or Nadab or Abihu or the 70 elders, but now this is just Moses, the one who has been called to be with him alone, The presence of this glory was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain. The glory of God was still a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.

Paul, in Romans 5, he concludes that section that I just quoted for you, that we are not only justified by faith and we have peace with God. That is, that God is not a God of enmity to us anymore, but He's the friend of those who are of faith in Abraham. That we do not only have peace with Him, but also that we have access to Him. But then he says that we also rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. The glory of God that was a devouring fire under the terms of the old covenant now in Christ becomes the delight of the soul of the Christian to the point that we can say that we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God that is coming and it is going to be manifest to the living and the dead, that when He comes and He judges the living and the dead, the manifestation of the glory of God for those who are truly in Christ Jesus is a gladness, rejoicement of the soul, and then we say we await for the coming and the appearing of the Savior.

The manifestation of the glory of God is not anymore a fearful thing for the soul of humans, not because of our perfections, but because the One who died upon the cross, His blood is perfect and sufficient and is God Himself. And He has made not only a way for us to be in the presence of God, but He has conquered life and He has given it to us by grace through faith. Amen. Very good. Let's pray.