Leaving Egypt: Deep Relationship

Exodus 24: 1 - 11  

Cody Kennamer

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:18

If you would uh stand for the reading of God's Word, we're gonna be in Exodus chapter 24, verses 1 through 11. You can find that if you don't have a Bible with you, there's red Bibles around, you find that on page 71. Uh we love for people to be able to see the passage as we read it and as we preach it.

SPEAKER_05 0:39

Then the Lord said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, but Moses alone is to approach the Lord. The others must not come near, and the people may not come up with him. When Moses went and told the people all the Lord's words and laws, they responded with one voice, Everything the Lord has said we will do. Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said. He got up early the next morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve stone pillars, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he sent young Israelite men, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he splashed against the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it to the people. They responded, We will do everything the Lord has said, we will obey. Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you, in accordance with all these words. Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites. They saw God, and they ate and drank.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Thank you, Lily. All right. Let's pray as we go to God's word this morning. Father, let the words of my mouth, Lord, the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. I wonder if you can relate to this statement, and since I'm asking it, I'm pretty sure we all can. But it's this is that we all desire relational depth. We all desire depth in relationships. Now we can find this in a variety of ways. Maybe it's in our marriage, maybe it's in a relationship with our kids, with friends, with future spouses, with parents. There is not only do we want relational depth, but there is a depth in our hearts when it comes to those relationships. We desire those things. And that they're important to us. And sometimes the lack of depth, right, can bring us sorrow. And the depth that we find in relationships can give us joy. I think of personally, uh, my family and I, we moved from the Birmingham area almost a year ago, and we had been there for almost nine years, and leaving the depth of relationships in that community, in that space, was hard. We all have this desire for deep relationship. And as we look to this passage this morning, I think we see something of the relationship that we can have with God. What we believe as a church and what Christianity believes is the most important relationship we can have. It's our relationship with God. Just to set the context again, you know, we took a week off for Easter, and we were in, before that, we were in the Ten Commandments for uh three weeks, and so let's just go big picture Exodus. Okay, you can think of Exodus in three movements. Okay, uh chapters 1 to 18 is God's deliverance, God delivering his people out of slavery, out of Egypt. And then, secondly, the second movement is covenant, God's covenant relationship entering into his people in uh chapters 19 to 24. And so we're kind of ending that today. And then the rest of the book is about worship, about God setting up his people to worship him. And so chapter 24 here is actually kind of finishing the covenant sandwich, if you will, um, of this section. In chapter 19, if you remember, uh God's people are at the foot of Mount Sinai, and God initiates this covenant with his people. Um, they willingly accept. He says, I want to make you a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. Um in chapters 20 to 23, we didn't uh preach on 21 to 23, but uh chapter 20 is Ten Commandments, and then God goes into uh more law, um, more law that we'll talk about in a second. But really, that whole is God putting out those covenant, those relational stipulations. And so chapter 24 is that covenant being affirmed. God affirming that covenant with his people. And this covenant is not a it's not a new relationship. This is not a new thing taking place. This is actually a movement of God's grander covenant of grace, his his um covenant he made that he was going to bring a redeemer to save his people. It's not a different covenant from the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis, where God says that I'm going to make you a great nation and a great offspring and give you land. But the key point of all of this is that this is a relationship that God initiates, that God is the pursuer in, and that God is the rescuer. And so let's look at this deep relationship that God has for us in this and what it means to be in deep relationship with God. And first is that deep relationship with God requires listening to his word. Deep relationship with God requires listening to his word. If you look back at verses three through seven, Moses has come down, he's telling his people the words of the Lord. Uh right, he says, verse, verse three, Moses came down and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. Um verse seven, then he took the book of the covenant and read it, and hearing of the um, and the people heard it. And so Moses comes down and he's he's proclaiming God's word, but what exactly is he proclaiming here? Right? What are they listening to? Well, we know from the previous chapters that he is proclaiming the Ten Commandments, and then the the what we call the civil and ceremonial law that is uh found in the other chapters. And so the Ten Commandments, right? These are the laws from God, the rules for our life that he gave for us, that was that's were were actually written by the finger of God on stones, on tablets. And so they're meant to be binding, right? We've we spent three weeks on this talking about how this still applies to our lives. Then he also gives the civil and ceremonial laws, which is basically just this. It's it's God saying, Israel, in your specific time, in your specific place, here are applications of the principles of the Ten Commandments. And so how do how do they respond? They hear this, and just like in chapter 19, they have a strong response. It's strong obedience. Again, in verse 3, it says, All um, all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And then verse uh seven, they say they said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do, and we will be obedient. Now we can quickly dismiss the Israelites here because we see their story, we can read their whole story, and we know they have already not done that, and they're gonna continue to not do that. But I think we can also probably, if we were to write down our story, we can look at our lives and say, okay, there's some some of the same pattern. And so in this moment, there is this sincere obedience in God's pursuit of them. So what about us? Right? God has chosen to speak to us today in his word, right? In the Bible. A Bible that he put together, a Bible with a variety of authors that was written over a long time, telling his story of redemption, telling us what we are to believe about God and what he requires of us. Right? We believe that God's word is authoritative, that when God we read God's word, it's him speaking, that it's inspired by God, that he is the author. He used human authors, but it's God who is the author. That's that it's also inerrant and infallible, which is basically just fancy words of saying that it doesn't have any errors and it's incapable of having any errors. We see in God's word just the vital impact on the Christian life, or for anyone's life, um, that the scriptures have. If you think of Psalm 1, there's this picture. It says, Blessed is the man or the woman who delights in the law, who meditates on it day and night. They're like a tree by a river, which means there's they are nourished. You think of 2 Timothy 3.16, where Paul says, all scripture is breathed out by God, and it's profitable for teaching and reproof and correction for training in righteousness. So, how do we do this? How do we listen to God's word and apply it to ourselves? We have the ability to listen to God's word and grow in deeper relationship with God the Father through God the Son by the working of the Holy Spirit, through the illuminating of God's word, through the work of the Spirit, right? You think of illumination, of lighting up, of bringing to life God's word. As we come to God's word, the Spirit gives us ears to hear, it gives us eyes to see. J.I. Packer, he um he defines uh or explains the illumination of the spirit like this. He says, illumination is applying God's revealed truth, God's word, to our hearts so that we grasp, as reality for ourselves, the Bible. Right? And so it's this working of the Spirit that God transforms our hearts in it. If you think of um, you know, when we talk about uh we had an evangelism series over the past year and we talked about listening, listening to people, of listening to hear what people are saying instead of listening to respond, right? Because often, I don't know about you, but I can find myself in a conversation and somebody's talking, and I'm just thinking about how I'm gonna what I'm gonna say to them back, right? And so listening to hear is actually acknowledging um what they are saying, truly listening to someone. So, how do we come to God's word? How do you come to God's word when you read it? Are you listening to hear? Are you listening to hear what God has to say in his word? Deep relationship with God comes through spirit-driven listening to his word. But secondly, deep relationship with God requires a sacrifice. And so in verses three through seven, right, Moses uh shares God's word. The people respond, but we also see this where he they build these this altar, okay? And so they build one altar, which represents God, and then they repres they build twelve pillars, which would have been the twelve tribes to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. And then we see two offerings in this passage. We see one, uh, and they were a common pair, we see the the burnt offering. This would have been uh where they burnt burned the entire thing to show sacrifice. It was the point to atonement. Then we also see a peace offering. And in the peace offering, it would have been they would have burnt part of it and put it on the altar, but they would have they would take the other part, and the people who um who gave the offering would eat it. And it was a sign of peace, a sign of fellowship with God. But then we see uh in verse six, right, that that when they make the sacrifice, uh Moses takes part of the blood, puts it in a basin, he puts the other blood on the altar, and then he takes it from the basin and he he sprinkles it on God's people. A little bizarre, right? So what's going on here? What does this represent?

unknown 15:42

Right?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

If the altar represents God, um, right, and then we have the twelve tribes represented by the pillars, and then there's Moses is sprinkling the blood on the people. Well, for one, this is again, we go back to covenant, right? Relationship, a blood-bound oath together. And in the ancient Near East, it was very common, I think we've talked about this before in this series, that they would actually, they would cut an animal in two, separate it, and the two covenant makers would walk through it, saying, Let this be done if we break this covenant. If you remember in Genesis 15, when God enters into the covenant with Abraham, this happens, but instead of Abraham and God walking through, we see this image of just God walking through the bloody animal. And so on in one way it represents that. In a second way, the people, if you remember in chapter 19, they're called to be a priesthood of believers, to be God's priesthood. And later in Exodus, we're going to see that the same type of thing happens when God ordinates or ordains the priests for the temple. That there's a blood offering put on the altar and on the priest. You see, at the core of this is really the making atonement for his people. This is what the sprinkling of blood on the altar signifies. And I want us to just notice God's mercy to his people in this moment. Right? They have just made this huge commitment, this commitment that they cannot keep. And the first thing that God does in this situation is he covers his people with mercy, with atonement. They proclaimed obedience, but God in his loving kindness knew that they needed what they needed was a sacrificial atonement. We must remember that a deep relationship with God always requires a sacrifice. Christ, who is the better sacrifice. We see this in Hebrews, and you know, Hebrews is all about kind of the main idea is that Jesus is better. He's the better king, he's the better covenant, he's the better sacrifice. And in chapter 9, it actually speaks explicitly about this passage in Exodus 24 and explains the necessity of shedding blood in Christ as the better sacrifice. In chapter 9, starting in verse 13, it says, The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean, sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. Okay. Verse 14, how much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciousness, consciousness, from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve him. If you think of Matthew 26, Jesus is in the upper room with his disciples, and he's having a Passover meal, and he's instituting the Lord's Supper, and he says, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I think that we walk around with a lot of guilt. A lot of condemnation on ourselves. Now let's distinguish that for a second. Because there is a way as Christians, as we as we grow in our awareness of who God is and the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of the cross, that our awareness of our sin becomes more and more. And so in the Christian life, we are gonna be convicted. We're gonna have godly grief. We're gonna have the feeling of conviction that comes from the Holy Spirit, and that's a good thing. But I think that even a lot of Christians, we walk around with a feeling of guilt and condemnation on our lives. Right? Objective guilt, that our status with God is still related to our guilt. But what we see, right, that a deep relationship with God requires sacrifice. And through Christ's sacrifice, we are found guiltless. We are found guiltless. If you think of my probably all-time favorite hymn, In Christ Alone, no guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me. There's no condemnation because of the sacrifice of Christ. So a deep relationship with God requires listening to his word, requires a sacrifice that we have in Christ, and then lastly. Provides his nearness. If you look back at verses 9 to 11, this is in this is actually God commands in verses 1 through 3 what happens in these verses. They're acting on what God has asked them to do. And as the covenant is confirmed, we see that God actually moves towards his people by letting them come to him. If you remember in chapter 19, remember there was no one was to come near to the mountain at all. Except for Moses and Aaron. God actually, if you read back through it, it's kind of funny because God says to Moses several times, like, hey Moses, make sure they do not come near the mountain. There's this powerful picture of fire and smoke and an earthquake and a trumpet. But in chapter 24, we see something interesting. God gives us levels of access to himself. And then a little ways further is Moses and Aaron, his two sons, and the 70 elders, they go up to that point. But then it's only Moses who draws near to him, to God. And we see something interesting. I wish I could just talk about this for 30 minutes, but I can't. The elders see God. Not fully, but they do have this direct access to God. They see this brilliant blue pavement. Pavements that's clear as the blue sky, that's contrasted with the storm that was God, and they see and experience being in the presence of God. And what do they do? It says, right, that he did not lay his hand on them, but rather they sat and they ate and they drank. He sat and ate, probably more likely, the meat that was part of this peace offering, this fellowship with God, confirming this covenant. And the tabernacle, the place where God will dwell and they worship God, is described. That the tabernacle actually follows this same graded access. That you have the outer courtyard where the Israelites can come. Then you have the inner room where the priests come, and then the holy of holies where only the high priests can come. And there was a nearness to God. But through the fall in Genesis 3, right, we there's a separation of that relationship. And so we see in this, God is moving towards his people. Again, when we look, when we look, they're looking forward, we're looking back on Christ. Who God sent to be near, to be fully man, fully God, to come incarnate to this world, to be the perfect prophet, priest, king, the perfect sacrifice. Remember on in the Gospels where it talks about when Jesus dies on the cross and the curtain of the temple is ripped, signifying the access that we have to God through Christ, through our union with Jesus, that his spirit dwells with us, that he is with us. Again, Hebrews 10 says this, verse 19. It says, Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by new and living way, open for us through the curtain, that is his body. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God. Let us draw near to God. I have young kids, which means a lot of my illustrations are probably gonna, for now in the foreseeable future, are gonna be about young kids. But that's okay. But, anyways, I think you can either relate with this as a parent or as somebody witnessing this, or maybe kids, maybe you've experienced this yourself. If you've been, when a kid, a young kid gets gets scared of something or insecure of something, maybe entering into a new school or a new situation, or maybe, maybe uh kids, you're going into the pool for the first time, if you remember that and you're scared to death. What do you do? You cling to your mom, you cling to your dad. You draw near to them. My kids get about like super strength in that moment. That's how we are to, this is the call, I think, from this passage this morning for us is to draw near to God, to cling to him. Because he has drawn near to us. We need to know that he's pursuing us, he's pursuing you. He's the rescuer for us. Amen? All right, let's take a couple of minutes. We do this every every week, a time of application. Um, we want to be not only hearers of the word, but doers also. And this is a a moment for us to just unpack, okay, this is what I heard, and this is what I think it means for my life. And so we'll do that now.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

I just wanted to say it was really, I was thinking about this, it's really interesting how much we take for granted that the Bible is a lot of a reading it to take in versus how you're saying listening to respond. We really do that heavily. And even if you sit there and you can say I don't do that with the Bible, but you can look at your own personal life and how you have conversations with people. Do you sit there to listen so you can take it in, or do you sit there and listen so you can respond? And it just it really made me think about what's just going on with me and in society, how we like to just I think this versus I see this from God. I think we try to turn the sitting and listening into, you know, I I just it's it's very interesting, you know, how we do that. And we may not even realize it.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, Caleb.

SPEAKER_04 29:39

Hey, Cody. Hey, could you maybe dig into the importance of the like the pavement, the the sapphire stone it's talking about? I was a little curious about that.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yeah. Um it's, you know, if you think about and this is me just running off of commentaries I read, so uh, but it makes sense, right? That that they are going, they don't have full access to God. Um and that this uh and so as they go up, it's kind of a graded dis ascent. And so if you think they're on this path, um then, or they see this path, and so commentators will say, well, they were they're seeing uh potentially God's God's feet, right, on the path. And so that right there they didn't have full access, but they were seeing part of it. Um and I think the just the there's probably more significance to it than I'm saying, but um, but then there's also just that like blue clearness if you think about what they've been seeing is this storm cloud, um, and so then seeing just this blue clear path that looks like a clear blue sky. Um so yeah, I hope that answers your question a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

To piggyback on that, Lapis Lazuli, um the best in the world, is from Northeast Afghanistan. And then um Aaron's breastplate, when it says sapphire, it's really Lapis Lazuli, which is brilliant dark blue. So I just wanted to share that.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

There you go. I like that.

SPEAKER_06 31:22

I just love how the people promise twice in this passage that they're gonna be obedient because that really makes me feel better about my own little promises to God, about my pet sins. And I was just struck by how you know God's response to that isn't laughter, yeah, and okay, sure, but grace, you know, for them. So I just think that's an amazing picture of our attempts to be make ourselves righteous and God's just not needing that, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean when we are we have faith in Christ, we're walking with Christ a lot of time. Like when I say like I want to be obedient, I want to grow in this way, it is sincere. Um it is sincere that we're gonna do that, but I think in this passage, we just see the beauty of how um because we know the story, but we know how faithful God's gonna be to his people. So, yeah, that's good. All right. Call the musicians up and I'll pray. Father, the grass withers and the flowers will fall, but your word stands forever. Lord, thank you for this truth. Um, Lord, I pray that however we have come in this morning, that you would work through your spirit in our hearts, that we you would help us to see uh the beauty of Christ. Um and just root us in that, Lord. Uh thank you for for the way you pursue us, Lord, um, and the ways uh even in the ways that we that we fail. Uh I pray this in your holy name. Amen.