Stains of Promise (3)
Notes
Transcript
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.”
Scripture: Exodus 24:1-8
Sermon Title: Stains of Promise
Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is two weeks in a row for some of you hearing about blood, have you ever really considered how often it comes up in Scripture. We find it when God plagues the water of the Nile River, in all of the sacrifices that happen, and last week we had the imagery of blood painted on the doorframes of the Israelite houses on the night of the Passover. When most of us think about Scripture and what our faith is based on, we’re drawn to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God who came down as a man, shedding his blood and dying, that all who believe may be set free from their sin and have life. Not often do we think about the blood truly getting on us or even in a way on God which is what we see here as the blood of the sacrifice is being sprinkled onto an altar as well as God’s people. I’ve entitled this message “stains of promise,” and while I hope to really get at the meaning of the blood in this passage and what it means for us as we consider the whole Bible, I think there’s something about its staining quality, that which does not allow it to come off from that which it touches easily that helps to communicate a little something extra that we might not always pick up on. This morning we are going to look at this covenant ceremony, and as we go we’ll try to pick out three main things: the representatives, an agreement, and a sign, and it’s in that final part of the sign that I hope we can come back to the double character of blood.
This is a pivotal point in the Old Testament and God’s people in the nation of Israel, but it’s also a part of our history as we too are called God’s children. You have already heard me use this word “covenant,” and I’m guessing that most of you probably know that word, but if not, it can be thought of like a promise, a treaty, or a legal contract. It involves multiple groups coming into an agreement with stipulations, things that need to get done as well as potential blessings and curses, rewards and punishments attached to it. A popular covenant for us today is marriage, when two people commit to one another in a very different way than living as a single man and a single woman as well as very different from just living together. With the covenant of marriage comes at least some expectation of sharing, of caring for, of denying yourself and growing into and with your husband or wife. What is happening in this covenant in a way is a formal marriage of God and Israel, but it’s also really the birthing of a nation and how it is shaped. When Joseph brought his family into Egypt to live during the famine, the group numbered 70 plus their wives and servants and they had been a family of foreigners that moved around, but now coming out of Egypt, the Israelites numbered into the millions, but up until this point, they’re still nomads or foreigners, they weren’t a sovereign state. This covenant initiated by God is what forms them as a particular people with a particular way of life and a particular promise.
Who are the representatives here? God and Israel. Moses, who is a mediator, the liaison has received the words of the Lord in the 10 Commandments and in the decrees which follow up until this point. Remember in chapter 19, the people said we want to be in this covenant with God, we want to be his treasured possession. Now here in chapter 24, the people affirm for a second time that they want this covenant and will do everything that God has set up for them. The covenant, however, is not set in stone until the formal ceremony that comes the next day takes place.
So we read, the next day Moses makes an altar, not just a heap of rocks set up for offerings, but this altar represents the Lord and his presence that is to be with his people. The other representative entering into the covenant is Israel, a people made up of twelve tribes, twelve family lines born from Jacob that are to be a “treasured possession.” The tribes are represented by twelve stone pillars, is the installation we might say of a memorial. If we look at the story of God’s people as we receive it in God’s word, notice that God is faithful, that his promises and relationship to his children were meant to be passed down from parents and grandparents to their children and the generations to come. If we look ahead to Joshua 4, after the Israelites have been punished for their doubt concerning entering the Promised Land by being forced to stay in the desert for 40 years so that only their children may enter, they cross the Jordan and 12 men are committed to each pick up a stone that was to be set up as a sign so that when children asked later what happened, their parents could tell them of how God cut the flow of the river off so that the ark of the covenant could go through. While we don’t find those words here, I believe it makes sense that not only does the stone altar and the 12 pillars stand as representatives for the covenant initiation that happens here, but also they would be memorials, monuments, reminders that whoever might see them later would know something happened.
What happened here? That’s the covenant agreement and while it’s clear that the primary focus for these people is their word of compliance to the 10 commandments, we have to read this in its context, which makes the covenant so much bigger. It’s a covenant that we might say goes all the way back to Adam and Eve, who after they fell into sin, God foretold that the woman’s offspring would crush the evil in the world, which puts all of history through today and the time to come within the plan of redemption that God has for a world fallen in sin. Continuing on the context of the covenant though, we see find Abraham, who God called him to leave his home with the promise of great things to come, even though he wouldn’t see the fullness of what would come about, and the child by which this people would come wasn’t born until late into his life when it seemed laughable that his wife Sarah and him would even have a child. But God provided through this family line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob who received the name Israel, and all of their offspring leading up to this moment. This covenant is a part of the bigger narrative of Scripture, a part of the greater drama of God working out the salvation of his people. It’s not the climax, but this covenant which Israel enters into is one in which they are to listen and obey, when they fall they have to continually offer sacrifices as a way of atonement. There’s nothing extraordinary about the twelve tribes of Israel compared to the rest of the world’s population, but yet God had set them aside as his treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, and this covenant agreement was how they were to live to receive the fullness of that.
It seems that Israel keeps giving the same response over and over again when they hear about the covenant, but notice the difference here in verse 7: “We will do everything the Lord has said,” and this time they add, “We will obey!” What’s translated “obey” in our text is a Hebrew word which ranges in meaning from “to hear, to listen, to give heed, and to obey.” The agreement being made isn’t between equals, there’s a recognized order for the status of the two sides. We might want to look at this as how parents and children relate, and in a way that fits. Israel right now is an obedient child, giving their word to their father or mother. It’s an active and continuing pledge, “We will obey,” we want to be who God is willing to make us, we sincerely intend to follow the law. As the process of redemption continues in freeing the people from slavery and leading them to their Promised Land, the Law was a covenant on the lives of God’s people. It had a binding on how they would act and relate to God and neighbor; they were sinners who would fall and not live up to the standards they agreed to, but unlike most covenants that we have where people have a limited number of chances, this was a covenant that would last though all the times they broke, God will always be there as the one who is people could and should turn to.
With that we come to the sign of the covenant, blood. Moses took half of the blood and sprinkled it on the altar, and then he sprinkled it we’re told on the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” There’s different beliefs out there about if he sprinkles it on the pillars which represent the people or if it’s just on the 70 elders who lead the people or if in some way he would sprinkle the whole crowd with the blood, but whomever it is done to, the blood signs the covenant parties together. Blood is a sign of life, a sign in sacrifices that something else died so that another could be declared “clean.” The use here as “the blood of the covenant” was a signing and declaration of it going into effect. The writer of Hebrews looks back on this event, and in chapter 9 we read that in the manner that blood was used to cleanse and sanctify the tabernacle and those things which were consecrated for worship, made holy to the Lord, so is this people Israel a holy people set apart for God.
A covenant is irrevocable, a detail that Moses would remind God of not many weeks later when the people would build an idol with their gold and as easily as they give their word of obedience and adherence to, they become like rebellious children who say “Yes, mom” or “Yes, dad,” but then quickly turn back on their word or have no intent to actually follow in the first place. It’s with this in mind that I’m drawn to the character of blood that makes it hard if not impossible to erase. Whether it was thrown onto a part of the people or all of the people or even just the rocks themselves, the blood would not disappear. I know, there are bleaches out there which can get rid of blood, but it’s pretty hard even if the blood is removed from visibility to get rid of any traces of it. For Israel to have that visual reminder with them that they have been made holy, they have become a nation of priests, a kingdom people because the same blood which was put on the altar representing God intentionally was put on them as well, that’s a stain of promise to cherish. Even when they were disobedient, forgetting what they had covenanted into, they still held those great promises of God; sinning was a way of getting rid of that stain, but the trace of blood cannot come off of the people.
While this blood of the covenant was a stain that set this people apart and formalized the relationship of the people of Israel with the one God who they were to love, trust, and obey, this stain was not the one that would once and for all fully redeem them, it was not the one that brought about grace. In Hebrews 10, we read, “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship…It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when Christ came into this world, he said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God.’” Jesus Christ came and he shed his blood, one time, and being God and man, having lived a perfect life, he was the climax in the story of redemption, he was the one who could fulfill the law and all it was intended to be. He came out of the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he opened the mission of God to all humankind so you and I, who are not of the same lineage, can enter into the new covenant which he offered in his life death, and resurrection.
At the foot of Mt. Sinai, Moses told the people “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all those words.” A similar line to what we hear from Jesus concerning what he came to do: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” That’s the promise that we remember and celebrate as we did last week with the Lord’s Supper. Pastor Jeff preached, we are not to venture out from under the blood, we are to live with an impossible amount of guilt wondering how it can ever be covered. Brothers and sisters, we’re new covenant believers! We recognize we cannot live up to any covenant, but yet Christ made a way that we can live in the assurance and promise of our redemption because of what he did! God’s grace given by the shedding of his blood which accomplished what no animal sacrifice ever could. We join the people of Israel in getting stained though now in the blood which stains a new promise, which leads us to not live in fear but in hope. As much as I might like to take out a paint brush and sprinkle you all to help this stick, I know it would be irritating, and ultimately it’s not necessary.
Brothers and sisters, we are gifted with this covenant, the Spirit that has been sent to dwell in us provides the stain of promised grace in us. Taking the stain seriously upon our lives should mean that it is one of the few stains we don’t want to get rid of even if we could. It’s not a stain that guarantees we’ll have easy lives with all sorts of treasures, but it’s a stain that Jesus, our prophet, priest, and king as a couple of the young people noted last week in their profession of faith, it’s a stain that has been given to us by which we are invited into those roles as well. Let’s not try to hide or wash out that stain! We get to bring the good news and hope to those we spend our time with. We get to enter into darkness in our own lives and become available to others going through darkness and shine a light, offering a path to the truest light and the forgiveness which he alone can offer. We get to reign as caretakers of this world and in the life to come, we get to use our gifts in the fields which God opens up to us. The stain of promised grace that is on each of God’s people, let’s live in thanks to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is worthy of all praise, glory, and obedience. Amen.