Exodus 24

Exodus 24:9-34

XXV THE FEAST OF THE , THE ASCENT OF MOSES AND JOSHUA INTO THE , THE BREACH OF THE , THE BUT Exodus 24:9-34:35

1. What is this lesson and its outline?

Ans. – The lesson is from Exodus 24:9 to the end of that chapter, with a mere glance at the next seven chapters, 25-31, and then 32; it covers three full chapters, nearly all of another chapter, and a glance at seven other chapters. I will explain to you about that glance as we go along.

The outline of the lesson is:

The Feast of the Covenant, Exodus 24:9-11.

The Ascent of Moses and Joshua into the Mountain, Why and How Long, Exodus 24:12-31:18.

The Breach of the Covenant, Exodus 22:1-6.

The Covenant Restored but Modified, Exodus 32:1-34:35.

We commence at the first item of the outline, viz.:

The Feast of the Covenant. – That part of the lesson is Exodus 24 and commences at Exodus 24:9-11. Let us read that: “Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu [two sons of Aaron], and seventy of the elders of Israel [and we learn from Exodus 24:17 that Joshua, the minister or servant of Moses, was along. That makes seventy-five persons [: and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the very heaven for clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: and they beheld God and did eat and drink.” That is the feast of the covenant.

2. What of the custom after ratifying a covenant and an example from Genesis?

Ans. – Nearly always just after a covenant was ratified the parties to the covenant partook together of a meal to show their fraternity and communion. The Genesis example you will find where Laban and Jacob made a covenant. The covenant is prepared, they agree to enter into a covenant, they put up a token of the covenant, they build an altar, they make sacrifices, they ratify the covenant in the blood of that sacrifice. Then they sit down and eat a meal together, which is the feast of the covenant. You will find all of that in the Genesis account of Laban and Jacob. So here a covenant having been proposed, an agreement to enter into it made, a preparation for it, the terms of the covenant given as stated in their threefold characters, that covenant carefully read, an altar erected, sacrifices offered, the blood of the covenant sprinkled upon the altar and upon the people, and so ratified, then follows this feast of the covenant.

3. What are the provisions used at the feast in such cases?

Ans. – The provisions are the bodies of the peace offering. There are two offerings, viz.: the burnt offering, which has to be burned up, then the eucharistic or thank offering. That thank offering furnishes the material of the feast after the covenant is ratified.

4. Who was the representative at this feast with God and a New Testament analogy?

Ans. – The representatives here are: First, Moses, then his servant Joshua, his army chief; second, the high priest and his two sons – that is five; and third, the seventy elders of Israel. All Israel did not meet God and partake of a feast, but the representatives of Israel in the persons of Moses, Joshua, Aaron and his two sons, and the seventy elders, who meet God and partake of this feast. Now the New Testament analogy is that the Lord’s Supper which was to memorialize the sacrifice of Christ was participated in by representatives of the church, the apostles. The apostles were there, but not there as individuals. They represented the church just as they represented the church in receiving the Commission, so that it was simply a church observance even at the time of its institution.

5. What of the communion in this feast and the New Testaments analogy?

Ans. – The communion is not the communion between Moses, Aaron, and the elders, that is, it is not a communion with each other, but it is a communion with God, and the New Testament analogy is as Paul expresses in his first letter to the Corinthians: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion, or participation, of the blood of Christ?” and yet how often people misrepresent the idea of that communion, as when A, B, and C commune together to show their fellowship for each other, or a man’s communing to show his fellowship for his wife. The word means “participation” and the one in whom is the participation is God: “The loaf which we bless, is it not a participation, the communion of the body of Jesus?” So here these representatives of all Israel communed with God a little way up the mountain, not far.

6. The record says that they saw God. What kind of a sight of God did they see, and what other cases in the Old and New Testaments?

Ans. – They did not see any form or likeness of God. Moses is very careful to say that “no man can see God and live.” He is careful to say in Deuteronomy 4 that at Sinai they saw no similitude or likeness. Now, in Isaiah 6 he (Isaiah) sees God as they saw him, that is, he sees the throne; he sees the pavement; he sees a great many things about the throne, the angels, the cherubim and the seraphim, but he doesn’t see any likeness of God, though he hears God talking. Precisely so you find it in Ezekiel 1. He sees the chariot of God, four cherubim, their wheels, their wings, and their faces looking every way, but he doesn’t see the One in the chariot, and so it is in Revelation 4 where John is caught up to heaven and he sees the very same thing, this very pavement, and the throne, the cherubim, the angels round about the throne, and he sees something that represents the Holy Spirit, and he sees something that represents Jesus Christ, a precious stone which represents God, but he doesn’t see God.

7. Apply this thought to transubstantiation and consubstantiation in our feast, as the Romanists and Luther taught.

Ans. – The Romanist says, “This is the very body and the very blood of Christ; you can see it and you can taste it.” And the consubstantiation advocate, Luther, says, “The bread is not the body of Christ and the wine is not the blood of Christ, but Christ is there this way: You take a knife and put it in the fire and take it out of the fire when it is red hot, and you have the same metal, but you have something there that was not there before, viz.: heat, you can touch it and feel the effect of that heat burning.” You can take cognizance of that kind of a presence, but in this analogous communication with God they saw no similitude, no form.

8. Explain that part of the feast where it is said that “God laid not his hand on the elders of Israel, though they saw him.”

Ans. – It means that God did not slay them. The declaration is often made, “Whoever sees God shall die.” They can’t bear the sight of God. But the kind of a sight of God that these people saw, they were able to see without having the hand of God laid on them, and what a beautiful lesson! Before the covenant was made, when the trumpet sounded and the darkness came and the earth quaked and the lightning flashed, and that strange, awful voice speaking the ten words, the people were scared almost to death; they wanted a mediator, somebody to come between them and that awful Being. But knowing that a covenant had been established and had been ratified by the blood of a substitute, they can see God in the sacrifice of the substitute and not die; see him in perfect peace, just as you, before you are converted, look upon God as distant and unapproachable, but after you see him in Christ in the covenant, the terror of God is taken away and you can sit there just as if eating a meal with a friend.

9. Give again a complete outline of the covenant.

Ans. – The complete outline of the covenant is: (1) God’s proposition of a covenant and their agreement to enter into a covenant;

(2) Their preparation for the covenant;

(3) The three great terms of the covenant;

(4) The ratification of the covenant;

(5) The feast that follows the covenant. Will you keep that in mind? You need to be drilled on that every now and then, so that when anybody asks you where there can be found a copy of the Sinai covenant and all the parts of it, you can answer: “It commences with Exodus 19, and closes with Exodus 24.” That is the whole thing in all its parts.

The Ascent of Moses into the Mount, Why and How Long? This is the second item of the outline. That is found immediately after what we have been discussing, commencing at Exodus 24:12. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there”: that means, Moses, you are to be there quite awhile; “and I will give thee the tables of stone, and the law and the commandment, which I have written, that thou mayest teach them.” And Moses rose up, and his servant Joshua; and Moses went up into the mount of God. And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us, until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you; if any man have any matters to do, let him come unto them. And Moses went up into the mount, and the cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.

And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and went up into the midst of the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights." Now here are the questions on that: 10. Why is Moses, after the covenant is ratified and the feast is held, taken up into the mount? (He and Joshua alone go).

Ans. – He is carried up to receive the same law which had been spoken orally, now in writing – “which I have written.” And what he went up particularly to get was the two tables or the Ten Commandments, and in God’s own handwriting that he might keep them as a witness. “The tables of the Testimony” is the name of them. Moses wrote a copy that the people learned, but that particular copy was God’s own autograph. That was put up and preserved as “tables of the testimony.”

11. What is the meaning of “tables of stone,” “the law,” and “the commandment”?

Ans. – The tables of stone I have just described. But what was the law that Moses goes up after? You would miss that if you had to answer it off-hand, and the commentators all miss it. They don’t get in a thousand miles of it. You will find that it was what he received when he went up there – a special law, and that special law was that the sabbath, God’s sabbath, should be the sign of the covenant. You find that at the end of this section that we are now on. So the law he went after was the law of the sign. Then what was the commandment he went after? The Commandments are all given in seven chapters (25-32) and every one of them touches the law of the altar. We will glance at the outline of that directly.

12. Why were these tables of testimony and this sign of the covenant and these laws concerning the altar given to Moses?

Ans. – The lesson says, “That thou mayest teach them.”

13. Who was to represent Moses in the camp while he was absent in the mount?

Ans. – Aaron and Hur.

14. What reminder of a New Testament incident is in these words of Moses: “Tarry ye here for us until we come again”?

Ans. – It is Jesus in Gethsemane, when he let the representatives stop, and said, “Stay here while I go yonder and pray.”

15. What was the visible token that God was present with Moses, and why that token?

Ans. – Exodus 24:16-17 : “And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it and the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.” Now, why is that last word, or clause, “In the eyes of the children of Israel”? That was a token to them not to get impatient. “When you begin to say, ‘Moses stays a long time,’ you look up there at that cloud on top of that mountain, how exceedingly glorious it is, you may know that Moses is right in that cloud communing with God.”

16. How long was Moses up there in that cloud before God spoke to him, and why did he speak to him on the particular day that he did?

Ans. – Moses was up there six days. God called him up there: “Don’t you get impatient. Here is the test of your faith. You wait. I have called you up here, to have an interview and to receive certain things, and you wait; be patient.” Now on the seventh day, that is, the sabbath, which was the sign of the covenant, God spoke.

17. How long was Moses in the mount, and what is the New Testament parallel?

Ans. – Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights, and the New Testament parallel is that after Christ was sacrificed for the ratification of the covenant and they had eaten the feast of the covenant and Christ was risen from the dead, he remains with them forty days, instructing them. That is just exactly what God is doing with Moses. Just as Jesus uses forty days after his sacrifice in careful instruction of his disciples, so God after this sacrifice and ratification of the covenant, takes Moses up into that mountain for forty days of continued explanation.

18. Give, for the present, a mere summary of what Moses received on the mount, set forth in the seven chapters, 25-31.

Ans. – Just now all we want is a summary and the reason we don’t want to go into the details is that we take that up in the next chapter in connection with what follows. But all you want to know now is the outline. The outline is:

(1) He received the tables of the testimony;

(2) He received the law of the sign;

(3) He received the commandments as follows: (a) The commandment upon the people to furnish voluntary offerings for what was to be made;

(b) The making of the ark with the mercy seat on it where God was to be met; the making of a tabernacle for the shewbread; the making of the candlestick; the making of a tabernacle or tent with its subdivisions and its marvelous veil between the divisions; and the court and the oil that was to supply the lampstand or candlestick;

(c) The garments for Aaron, the high priest, when he officiated before God;

(d) The law of the consecration of Aaron to the office of high priest;

(e) The law of the consecration of the altar by which approach to God was to be made;

(f) The law of the daily sacrifice;

(g) The law of the golden altar, or the altar of incense, and bow it is to be offered. Incense is to be offered twice a day just like the lamp is to be lit twice a day and the sacrifice is to be offered twice a day – in the morning Aaron goes to trim the lamps – as the morning offering and the ascent of the morning cloud of incense representing the going up of the prayers of God’s people, and in the afternoon he goes to light the lamp, and there is the evening sacrifice and the going up of the incense;

(h) The atonement or ransom money and what that signifies;

(i) The laver, that was to be between the altar and the mercy seat, and what it was to be used for;

(j) The marvelous recipe of the anointing oil that was to be poured upon the head of a prophet or a priest or a king or a sacrifice;

(k) The perfume that was to be put at the place of entrance, indicating that they were to meet the fragrance of God right at the threshold of entrance or approach to him;

(l) The inspiration of the artificers of all this work. Just as an apostle was inspired to do his work, so certain men were here named that were inspired to do this work called for in all these things;

(m) That sabbath for a sign which I have already mentioned.

The Breach of the Covenant. – This is the third item. Where do you find that breach of the covenant? In chapter 32. We are coming to awful things now. The most interesting thing in the Old Testament: “And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him. And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden rings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

And all the people brake off the golden rings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received it at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf: and they said, These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow shall be a feast to Jehovah. And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” 19. Give the seven elements of this breach of the covenant. Ans. – (1) The rejection of Moses and of God and a demand for other gods to be made: “Make us gods.”

(2) This god, of course, being man made, was an idol.

(3) The form of the god was the Egyptian god, Apis, calf or ox, the Egyptian god that died of the murrain through one of the miracles of Moses.

(4) They built an altar of worship and of sacrifice.

(5) They offered both burnt and peace offerings.

(6) They had a feast to follow this covenant they were making with this new god, and,

(7) Stripping off their clothes, naked, they go into a drunken orgy and practice all of the beastly and infamous lusts that characterized that worship in Egypt and in other idol worshiping countries. Paul says, “The people sat down to eat and rose up to play,” and then adds, “Be ye not fornicators and adulterers as they were.” 20. What was God’s announcement to Moses and what were the purposes announced concerning Israel and the raising up of a new people?

Ans. – God saw that breach of the covenant that had just been made. The answer is this, commencing with Exodus 32:7 : “The Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and have said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and now, behold it is a stiffnecked people: now therefore let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.” That is the terrible announcement. They have broken the covenant. “I will instantly destroy them; I will raise up a new people from Moses. He will be the basis of the new people.” Now before they get out of this trouble there will be four intercessions of Moses.

21. What was the first intercession of Moses and its result?

Ans. – I quote it, commencing at Exodus 32:11 : “And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swearest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.” So the first thing was to stop instant destruction of that people. The result: “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.” He didn’t kill them right then, but he at least suspended that terrible bolt of divine wrath that was about to fall upon them.

22. What did Moses and Joshua see on their return to the camp?

Ans. – All the above happened before Moses came down from the mount. Joshua says, “I hear a great shout down in the camp. There must be an army or there must be a battle.” Moses says, “No, that is not the shout, neither of men on the battlefield, nor of men crying for mercy. That is the shout of singing; those people are singing down there.” And they came down and saw that calf; they saw their naked and beastly orgies; they saw the whole hideous sin which the people had committed.

23. What was the first token that the covenant was broken?

Ans. – Moses took the tables of the testimony and broke them all to pieces right in the sight of the people. “You do not need these tokens any more. I have brought you in the handwriting of God the witness of the covenant; you broke it; let the token be broken.”

24. What, in order, are the other things done in that camp by Moses when he got down there?

Ans. – Moses was not a man to go down there and hold his finger in his mouth. When he sees that thing he is stirred. Let us see now what, in order, were the things that he did. First, he took that calf and burned it until it pulverized; then he mingled the ashes of it in water and made the people drink it. Second, he shook his finger in the face of Aaron and said, “What have these people done unto you that you led them into this sin? I went up in that mountain to meet God; I left you as my representative.

Now what have these people ever done to you that you should lead them into this?” And Aaron pleads the baby act if ever a man did in the world. He says, “Well, they – they – they said, ‘Make us a god,’ and I told them to bring me the earrings and I put the earrings into the fire and there came out this calf; the fire did it.” An old father who, when his boy came home disappointed and broken in health and knowing nothing, after several years away at school, said, “All that money I put into the fire of education and there came out this calf.” Third, Moses said unto them in the camp, while naked and half drunk they stood before him not daring to open their lips, “Whoso is on the Lord’s side, let him stand by me.

I am going to draw a line. Somebody in this great camp surely is on the Lord’s side.” And the Levites came. You remember when Jacob pronounced the prophecy of blessing on his children he gave a big slice to Levi. When Moses goes to pronounce a blessing he is going to pronounce a great honor on Levi, and he is going to assign as a reason what Levi does this day. That whole tribe lined up on the side of Moses. They didn’t stand up there just as a show. “Now, if you are on the Lord’s side, draw your swords and wade into that crowd. Don’t stop if it is your brother, or father, or mother, no matter how close kin to you. There must be a penalty inflicted for this awful sin,” and Levi pitched in and slew three thousand.

Fourth, he began to take steps toward saving those people from temporal and eternal destruction, and that brings us to the next question:

25. What was the second intercession of Moses and God’s reply?

Ans. – Moses said, “You have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the Lord: peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.” Now you come to the next intercession of Moses: “And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said [and this is the greatest piece of intercession that ever took place on earth except in the case of Christ], Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin – ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.” Only one other man ever said anything like that, and concerning this same stiffnecked people, and that was Paul, “I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren’s sake.” Moses, in other words, offered himself as a substitute for the people: “Don’t, don’t destroy them! Destroy me!” It was a grand proposition. Now, what did God say to that intercession? “The Lord said to Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me,, him will I blot out of my book. I will not blot you out for them. The soul that sinneth it shall die.

Therefore now go, lead these people unto the place of which I have spoken unto them; behold mine angel shall go before thee; nevertheless in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them. And the Lord plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.”

26. What of the effect of this upon the people?

Ans. – They mourned and laid aside their ornaments and did not put them on from Mount Horeb onward.