The Book of the Covenant | Exodus 24:1-11
Brian Hedges | February 26, 2023
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to the book of Exodus. We’re going to be looking primarily in Exodus 24, but also covering some things from Exodus 21-24.
While you’re turning there, let me relate a conversation from Chris Wright, a conversation that he had with a young Christian who came to faith through reading the Old Testament Scriptures. Christopher Wright is an Old Testament scholar, and he remembers this conversation he had with a young Indian professional during a weekend seminar of the Evangelical Graduate Fellowship of India, where Wright was teaching on the ethical relevance of the Old Testament. This young Indian student came up to him and began to tell him how he had come to faith through reading the Old Testament.
He had grown up in a Dalit village, one of the lowest caste groups in India, despised and oppressed by higher-caste Hindus in the region. He had gone to university with the intention of getting an education and then turning the tables on his tormentors. That was his goal. But one day in his student room he found a Bible on his bed in his own Telugu language. It had been put there by other students. He read the story of Naboth in 1 Kings 21, whose vineyard was stolen from him by King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.
He was amazed as he read this story. He said to Christopher Wright, “This was my story: false accusations, confiscation of land, violence, murder. My family had suffered all such things.”
But then, when he turned the pages and he read about the prophet Elijah, who condemned the government in the name of a God he’d never heard of, he was even more amazed. He was shocked that there were religious leaders who would take the side of the poor, a poor victim, and would condemn a rich king and queen. He said, “I never knew such a God existed.”
This caused him to want to read the whole Bible, so he went back to Genesis and he started reading sequentially through the Old Testament. As he read the laws of God in Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy, he was even more amazed at all the details of how people were to live, and especially how they were to treat the poor. He said to Christopher Wright, “This God thinks of everything.” He was completely transformed and came to faith in Jesus Christ, became a Christian.
That story not only illustrates the abiding power and relevance of the Old Testament, but it also summarizes for us the comprehensive, all-embracing nature of God’s covenant relationship with his people. He is the God who thinks of everything, and he brings people into relationship with himself, and he reigns over them in all the details of their lives.
We’re going to see that this morning as God ratifies his covenant relationship with his people, the people of Israel, in Exodus 24. We’ve been studying together this wonderful book of Exodus. It is the story of redemption in the Old Testament. We’ve seen in this series that God is both the God who delivers, who redeems his people out of slavery in Egypt and brings them to himself that they might worship him and serve him, and he is the God who dwells among his people. He dwells with his people.
We’re in the second half of this book now, Exodus 19-40. We’ve come to the base of Mount Sinai, the mountain of God, where in a mighty theophany God reveals himself to his people and calls them to worship him and to hear his word. We’ve seen how God delivers his law to his people, the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments, the words from the fire, giving them a constitution to live by; and we’ve seen how the people were meant to respond in the joyful reverence and fear of the Lord.
Today we jump ahead to Exodus 24:1-11. This passage gives us a ceremony, it gives us a worship service, as the people of God gather there. They’re still at Mount Sinai—they’re going to be there for an entire year—and they’re gathered there at the base of the mountain, and through Moses mediating this service, they confirm and ratify this covenant, this commitment with Yahweh, the God of Israel.
Let’s begin by reading this passage together, Exodus 24:1-11. Hear the word of the Lord.
“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 twelve pillars, according to the twelve 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.”
This is God’s word.
This passage is all about God’s covenant with Israel. You see that word “covenant” used in both verse 7 and 8. This is an important theme in Scripture and it’s an important theme in Exodus. We first hear about God remembering his covenant earlier in this book, and then Exodus 6 tells us of how God is going to keep this covenant with his people. Now this covenant is ratified.
This is an important theological word, but it’s a word that we don’t really use in everyday life. We don’t usually use the language of covenant. So, what does that word mean? I just want us to begin by defining that. What is a covenant?
We could say that a covenant is a binding relationship based on a legal agreement. It’s similar to a treaty between nations or a contract between persons. But it’s more sacred than either of those, more intimate, more personal.
Philip Graham Ryken defines “covenant” as “a sacred relationship established by God, in which God belongs to his people and his people belong to him.” That’s a pretty good definition. “A sacred relationship established by God, in which God belongs to his people and his people belong to him.”
Perhaps the closest human analogy we can think of is marriage. In fact, as Christians we often refer to the marriage relationship as a covenant relationship. When two people get married, they together in a ceremony make vows to one another, vows before God and before their friends and family, vows to be faithful to one another, to love one another, to be bonded together, united together for life. That is a legal union, but it’s also a holy union, a holy relationship, and a union that is deeply personal and intimate.
In the same way, God makes this covenant union with his people. In fact, God in Scripture is often compared to a bridegroom, and Israel to his bride. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is our heavenly Bridegroom, our husband, and we as the church are the Bride of Christ. All of that speaks of this covenant relationship that God has with his people.
Well, this passage is all about this covenant, a very specific covenant that God made with Israel. This is the old covenant. We are now under a new covenant. Yet there are some similarities between these covenants, and as we study this passage we can see four things about this covenant that I think point us to the greater realities of our new covenant relationship with Jesus Christ. Those four things are: first, the people of the covenant; second, the book of the covenant; third, the blood of the covenant; and fourth, the Lord of the covenant.
We have a lot to work through here; let’s just take each one of these in turn.
1. The People of the Covenant
Obviously, in this passage the people of God are central to everything that’s going on. The people are mentioned as people six times, the people of Israel named in verses 4 and 11. We especially see the significance of this as the people commit themselves to obedience to the Lord, when they say, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” This is done in a symbolic way.
We see this in verse 4. We read that “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.” So these pillars, probably stone pillars around this mountain, are pillars that represent the twelve tribes, representing the whole people of God. It’s this whole people of God, the people of Israel, the nation, who are called together now and ratify this covenant as they swear allegiance to the God of Israel.
There are a couple of things we have to understand about the people of God, and these are things that help us understand ourselves and the people of God as well.
The first thing is their new identity. As the children of Israel who bound themselves to God in covenant, they were a new people. They were, in fact, a nation under the reign of God.
We already saw this a few weeks ago in Exodus 19. This is when they have come to the base of the mountain and God speaks, and we read these words in Exodus 19:5-6. “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant [notice this], you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
So God calls these people to this relationship with himself, and he says, “You’re going to be special. You’re going to be set apart from all the peoples of the earth. You’re going to be a special possession for me; you are going to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a people set apart for me.” They receive this new identity as the people of God.
They also receive access to God. This is one of the great themes in the book of Exodus, that God dwells with his people; he gives his people access to his presence. Now, it is a limited access, but nevertheless, God dwells among his people, and he gives the people some degree of access into his presence.
You see this in verses 1 and 2, when the Lord says 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.”
You might actually just think about the arrangement of people on and around Mount Sinai. This is important for you to see. You can see this in a chart. At the very top—the highest up on the mountain, closest to God—was Moses, Moses the mediator of the covenant. A little further off you have Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, along with Aaron. These will become the priests of Israel. Then further back are the seventy elders, and then at the base of the mountain are the people of Israel.
It’s important to understand the arrangement here, because this basic arrangement will then be mirrored in the tabernacle, which the people of God received instruction for, this portable tent that would be moved around where God would dwell with his people in the Holy of Holies. We receive instructions for that in Exodus 25-31.
You might actually say that the tabernacle is something like a portable Mount Sinai, as the same arrangement of the people, with God dwelling among his people, is set up. Wherever they move, God can dwell with them. In the same way that God had come to Mount Sinai in this cloud of glory, in the same way the cloud of the glory of God will dwell in the Holy of Holies, in the tabernacle, and people will have some degree—but limited degree—of access into the presence of God.
So, a new identity and access to the presence of God. This is important for us to understand as well, because we as the people of God under a new covenant also receive a new identity, and we also have access to the presence of God.
We saw a few weeks ago that the very words that are used to describe Israel’s identity in Exodus 19 are now applied to us as the church. Peter does this in 1 Peter 2:9-10. He says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
I think this means, brothers and sisters, that when we read these passages in light of the New Testament, we need to see that we also have a new identity, our new identity in Christ. We are called out to be the city of God, to be the people of God, a royal priesthood, a kingdom of priests for God.
Not only that, we also have access to God. In fact, Peter says in that same chapter that we are being “built up into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
We’re going to talk more about the profound implications of all of this in coming weeks, but today just ask yourself a few questions.
When you think about yourself, is this how you define yourself? Is this the identity that you think of? A lot of us, when we think about our identity the first thing we think about is perhaps our gender, or maybe we think about our nationality or we think about our ethnic background. We think about our family of origin, or maybe we think about our profession, what we do for a living. We might think about how much money we make and which socio-economic bracket we are a part of. We might think in terms of our education, we think in terms of our relationships, our hobbies, or our accomplishments. We define ourselves in all these different kinds of ways.
But listen, if you are a part of the people of God, your identity is not mainly defined by any of those things, it’s defined by the fact that you have been set apart for God. You belong to him! You’re in relationship to him, and you are called to be a part of this kingdom of priests, this chosen people, this nation of God, this holy people of God, the city of God on earth.
Do you think about yourself in those ways? Do you see yourself as belonging not to yourself but belonging to him? If you do, does that shape the way you live in the world, so that you see yourself as an ambassador for Jesus Christ on earth?
Brother and sister, do you understand what it means to have access to God? That you have the privilege of coming before the very throne of God. You and I don’t come with priests and sacrifices, because Jesus Christ is the sacrifice, the one final sacrifice offered once and for all. He is our High Priest, and that means that week after week when we gather in here for worship on the Lord’s Day, we come in the name of Jesus Christ, by virtue of what he has done, through his work as our mediator, as our priest, as our representative. We come into the presence of God and we have access, we can be in the very presence of the God of the universe!
Not only that, but in the quietness and the privacy of your own room, when you get on your knees to pray, you can be in the presence of God himself. Do you know that privilege? Have you enjoyed that access to God’s presence, worshiping him and knowing him? Does that shape your daily life, your daily interaction with God? This is part of what it means to be the people of God—a new identity and access into his presence.
2. The Book of the Covenant
The second thing we see in this passage is what we might call the book of the covenant. In fact, that phrase is used in verse 7, and it really has to do with the substance of this covenant that God made with his people Israel. Look at verses 3 and 4. “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.”
And then in verse 7 we read that he took the book of the covenant, he read it in the hearing of the people, and they say, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” So they are committing themselves to obedience to God, but obedience to something very specific, to what is called here the book of the covenant.
I want you to underscore those two phrases, those two words that are found in verse 3, “all the words of the Lord” and “all the rules.” I think that those two things—the words and the rules—refer to the substance of everything that’s included from Exodus 20 through Exodus 23. The words of the Lord are the direct words of God, the speech of God. In fact, Exodus 20:1 says, “God spoke all these words,” and what follows are the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments. These were the words from the fire, the voice of God as he spoke the law of God to his people in the form of the Ten Commandments, this providing something like a constitution for the people of God.
But then in Exodus 21:1 we read this phrase: “Now these are the rules,” and what follows for the next several chapters are all kinds of rules—judgments, we might call them; statutes—that God gives to his people that have to do with the application of the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments to their lives.
We might think of the Ten Commandments as a constitutional law and the rules as something like case law, where that basic law of God is applied to specific situations.
Then when you read Exodus 21-23—here’s a board summary—what you will see is that there are all kinds of rules that govern the life of the people of Israel. There are, for example, rules about the rights of slaves. Now, when you read that, you have to understand that this is not race-based slavery, such as we have in our own tragic history. This was something more like indentured servitude. What’s really significant here is that God puts limitations on that, so that people after a certain amount of time have to be free from that indentured servitude. There are rights to these servants or to these slaves.
These laws detail those things which were capital offenses, both on the social level and on the religious level. There are laws of restitution—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and so on. There are laws against injustice and oppression. Then there are specific mandates related to their use of time, their keeping Sabbath and the three feasts or festivals that were to be celebrated each year.
Now, that’s just kind of a rough summary of what’s in those chapters. We don’t have time, of course, to do a thorough survey of all those chapters. But here’s what I hope you’ll do: I hope you will read those on your own, and if you do I think you’re going to notice several things.
I think you’ll notice, first of all, that some of these laws seem strange, and maybe even overly restrictive. You read strange things such as, “You shall not boil the goat in its mother’s milk.” What is all that about? You’re going to read some things that seem pretty foreign.
But what you have to remember is that these specific rules were something like case laws for the nation of Israel, given to them in their own time and place in history, in their own culture, with a specific purpose and intention. One of the main things was to preserve their distinctiveness among all the other nations of the ancient Near East. So the things that were distinctive about Israel were to be how different they were, how holy they were, how pure and clean they were in their worship of God. So many practices from the other religions were forbidden for the nation of Israel. These rules were written to guide their lives and to protect their identity.
But as you read these laws, another thing you’re going to notice is how these rules demonstrate a deep concern for both private and public justice. There’s a concern for the sanctity of human life and for the fair and equitable treatment of the most vulnerable people in the ancient Near Eastern world. This would include slaves, women (especially widows), orphans, immigrants, and the poor.
Let me give you just one example, from Exodus 22:21-27. In that chapter we read these words:
“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.
“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. If ever you take your neighbor's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
This is characteristic of the God of the Old Testament—his care for the poor, the widows, the orphans, the immigrants; his concern with injustice of any kind. God’s promised to avenge those who oppress the most vulnerable people in the world.
I would suggest to you that, though this is a specific covenant for Israel, though Israel was a theocracy (a nation that was directly ruled by God himself), and though there is some distance between these civil laws and the civil laws of our own day, if you took many of these laws—most of the laws in the Old Testament—and you tried to think of what Western civilization would have been like if for the last 500 years we’d lived by these laws . . . it would have been much better. God’s laws were just, and they were fair.
A third thing you’ll notice in these rules is that God, in giving these rules and judgments to his people, structured their entire lives, and especially their time. You see that in particular in chapter 23 with the Sabbath laws, one day out of seven where they were to rest and to worship. Then the institution of three annual feasts; these were to be for the people of God, significant reminders to them of God’s deliverance in their lives and of their complete dependence upon him for everything. It was a reminder to them that their whole lives were to be lived under God’s reign.
This covenant, in other words, required a comprehensive and complete obedience in every aspect of their lives. “This God thinks of everything,” to quote again that young Dalit Christian who had read the Old Testament and was amazed by this God.
Now listen, you and I don’t live under the same covenant as Israel, but don’t make a mistake: God still requires us to live just lives and to devote ourselves entirely to him. It requires wisdom, of course, to know how to specifically apply the Old Testament to our lives today, but we should not miss the fact that the New Testament requires the same basic integrity of life, the same holistic devotion to God that we see in the old. Some of the specifics are different, but the abiding principles remain the same. Remember how James says in James 1 that true religion, undefiled before God, is this, to remember the widows and orphans in their affliction and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. It’s the same basic ethic. There are some differences, to be sure, but the same basic principles.
So we’ve seen the people of the covenant, we’ve seen the book of the covenant.
3. The Blood of the Covenant
Now—this is so important—the blood of the covenant. We see this in Exodus 24:5-6 and 8. In verse 5, Moses sent “young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.”
So there are two different kinds of offerings here. The burnt offering would have been the most common form of offering used in Israel. It meant both the whole-hearted devotion of the worshiper to the Lord and was also a part of the atoning sacrificial system. The peace offerings were fellowship offerings, where they would take the offering to the Lord, they would offer a part of it in fire, and then they would eat the rest. So it becomes something like a meal, where they would commemorate their worship of God.
Then in verse 6, “Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar.” And in verse 8 we read that “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.’”
What I want you to notice here is what Moses does with the blood of the covenant. He takes the blood and he divides it into two portions, and half of it he splatters on the altar, half of it he splatters or sprinkles on the people. What’s the significance of this?
I think the blood sprinkled on the altar teaches us something about the necessity for substitutionary atonement, in order to atone or cover—that’s what atonement means; it’s just a covering, a covering for the sins of God’s people.
Listen, there are a lot of people today who want to say that the Bible really doesn’t teach anything like substitutionary atonement. They want to say that when Jesus died on the cross he died to be an example to us, he died to show the love of God to us, he died to defeat evil powers—all those things are true, by the way, but they want to say, “Jesus really didn’t in any way take the judgment of God for our sins. He didn’t die as a substitute for sinners.”
I would just say in response to that, I don’t know how anybody can read the Bible and come to that conclusion, because straight through—this is a thread that runs all the way through. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they’re ashamed of their nakedness, they are banished from the garden, and what’s the first thing that God does? Animals are slain to provide a covering for their nakedness.
Think about Genesis 22 and the story of Abraham and Isaac. How is it that Isaac is not offered to the Lord as a burnt sacrifice? It’s only when God provides a ram in his place, a substitute.
You think about the great event of the Passover, which we’ve studied together in the book of Exodus. How is it that when the death angel comes through the land of Egypt, slaying all the firstborn, how is it that the Israelites are spared? It’s only because a lamb is slain and the blood is splattered on their doors, so when the angel sees their blood he passes over them.
You see it right here in this passage. You see it again in Leviticus 16 with the Day of Atonement, where once a year the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and would offer a sacrifice for the sins of the people. Over and over and over again you see sacrifice, substitution! You see something taking the sins, covering the sins of the people of God. All of this is pointing us to the great work of Jesus Christ, who is our sin-bearer, who offers a sacrifice in our place, who is our substitute, our representative.
Do you wonder why we sing about blood?
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
This is why. What can wash away my sins? / Nothing but the blood of Jesus! This is our hope!
I was reading some sermons last week from Spurgeon, one of my great heroes, of course. One phrase—this is a short quote, but this one just leapt off the page at me, where Spurgeon said, “Let the drops of his blood fall on your sins.”
Are you looking for peace of heart and mind and conscience this week? As you think about the sins of the last week, you think about your failures, you think about any disobedience, you think about impure thoughts or wrong words, an angry outburst, you said something that wounded your wife, that wounded your children, wounded your husband, hurt your friends, you did something that you regret—you look back over your life, even just the last few days, and you can see that your life is stained. You need a covering. What do you do? You let the blood of Jesus fall on your sins. Apply the blood.
William Gadsby, the great old hymn-writer, said,
Mercy speaks by Jesus’ blood;
Hear and sing, ye sons of God;
Justice satisfied indeed;
Christ has full atonement made.
Peace of conscience, peace with God,
We obtain through Jesus’ blood.
Jesus’ blood speaks solid rest;
We believe, and we are blest.
This is where we find peace with God: it is through the application of the blood of the covenant, the blood of Jesus Christ.
So blood is sprinkled on the altar; that’s substitutionary atonement. Then the rest of the blood is sprinkled on the people. Why that? Why does Moses sprinkle the people with blood?
I think it was to set them apart, to sanctify them, to set them apart for obedience. It’s in that context that they say these words: “All of the words that that Lord has spoken we will do” (Exodus 24:3), and, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” (verse 7). Then Moses sprinkles them with the blood.
Brothers and sisters, for us as well the blood of Jesus Christ sanctifies us and calls us to loving and grateful obedience to him. In fact, it’s this very passage, Exodus 24, that lies behind the opening to Peter’s first letter in 1 Peter 1. Peter says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you.”
He’s thinking of this, and he’s saying, “The real fulfillment of this is Jesus Christ. You’re sprinkled with his blood, you’re sanctified by his Spirit, to live obedient lives.” The blood of the covenant.
4. The Lord of the Covenant
One more thing; I’m almost done. The final thing we see in this passage is the Lord of the covenant. In keeping with what we’ve already seen in Exodus 19-20, here there is this mighty theophany, this visible manifestation of the presence of God. You see it in verses 9-11. It says,
“Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up [they’re on the mountain], 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.”
This whole covenant ratification ceremony is done in the presence of God, the Lord of the covenant. In fact, this passage is really bracketed by two other references to the Lord of the covenant. You have the angel of the Lord in Exodus 23. Who is the angel of the Lord? That is this character, this messenger of the Lord, who in some ways seems to be distinct from Yahweh but also seems to be in some ways identified with Yahweh. It was the angel of the Lord that had spoken to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3. It was the angel of the Lord in the pillar of cloud and fire that had led them through the wilderness in Exodus 14. In Exodus 23 the Lord says, “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.” He warns them to pay careful attention to this angel of the Lord, who’s going to lead them into the promised land and who’s going to vanquish their enemies before them. The angel of the Lord is something like a preincarnate manifestation of the second Person of the Trinity, as God himself dwells with his people.
Then, in the rest of Exodus 24, the glory of the Lord. Verse 16 says, “The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. On the seventh day he called Moses out of the midst of the cloud.” The glory of the Lord there on the mountain, in the cloud, in the fire.
All of this is showing us the Lord’s presence with his people—the Lord of the covenant, the one who enters into this relationship with the people of God.
Brothers and sisters, what we learn in the New Testament is that Jesus Christ is the Lord. He is the Lord of the new covenant. In fact, this significant phrase “the blood of the covenant,” did you know that phrase is only used in that exact form this one time in all the Old Testament, in Exodus 24? And then there’s a slight variation of this in Exodus 9:11. We read the phrase, “blood of my covenant.” But in the New Testament this phrase gets picked up in the book of Hebrews, but most importantly in the words of Jesus himself in Matthew 26:27-28.
Here’s the scene. It is the night before Jesus’ crucifixion. He is sitting with his disciples to eat a Passover meal. He is instituting the Lord’s Supper, and Jesus says, having given them the cup, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins.”
Here’s what’s interesting. Christopher Wright points this out, that Jesus makes three subtle but very important changes in the use of these words. The first thing he says is, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant.” Not “the blood of the covenant,” not, “the blood of my covenant,” but, “my blood of the covenant.” Why? Because he was about to shed his own blood to ratify a new covenant, to bring into existence a new covenant in fulfillment of the prophet.
He says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” What’s that? That is a direct quotation from Isaiah 53:12, where the servant of the Lord who suffers for the people of God, who bears their sins, their iniquities, so that the chastisement belonging to them falls on him, judged by God in their place. Isaiah 53:12 says that he “poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.” And Jesus says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many [here’s the third thing], for the forgiveness of sins.”
He’s evoking Jeremiah 31, one of the great promises of the new covenant. Jeremiah 31:34 says, “For I will forgive their iniquity and will remember their sin no more.”
Jesus is the Lord of the covenant. He is the Lord of the covenant who fulfills all of the typology of the old covenant and how now inaugurates the new, and he does it through shedding his blood, the blood of the covenant, for our sins.
Let me ask you this morning, have you found peace with God through the blood of Jesus Christ? Have you trusted in him? Do you know what it is to be washed and made clean and brought near to God through the blood of Jesus Christ? If you’ve never experienced that, maybe today could be that day where you confess your sins, you acknowledge your need for God’s mercy and grace, and you trust in what Jesus Christ has done for you.
For those of us who are believers this morning, may we grow in a deeper appreciation of the access we have to God through the blood of his Son, and may the response of our hearts be, “All that the Lord has said we will do. We devote ourselves to God in grateful obedience because of his grace and mercy in Jesus Christ.”
Let’s pray together.
Gracious, merciful God, how we thank you for your word! We thank you for your Son and the gift of the salvation that we have through him. We thank you that Jesus went all the way to the cross to shed his blood for our forgiveness and to bring us into a relationship with you. Lord, our prayer this morning is that, like the people of Israel, we would be so overwhelmed with the significance of being in this covenant relationship with you that the response of our hearts would be one of obedience and devotion, and that we could say from our hearts, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do,” not because our obedience is what gets us in—we know that it’s only the blood of Jesus Christ that brings us into this relationship with you—but because this is the right response to the mercies of God given to us in Christ.
As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, may that be our heart. May we consider and see in the emblems of the bread and the juice the broken body and shed blood of our Savior, and in receiving these elements may we say from our hearts, “Lord, we belong to you and we devote ourselves to be obedient to you.” We ask you to draw near to us in these moments, be glorified in our worship; we pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
