Scripture Daily

Context No. 4248 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 24:8-12: in context

8Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “Look, this is the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has made with you concerning all these words.” 9Then Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up. 10They saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was like a paved work of sapphire stone, like the skies for clearness. 11He didn’t lay his hand on the nobles of the children of Israel. They saw God, and ate and drank. 12The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and stay here, and I will give you the stone tablets with the law and the commands that I have written, that you may teach them.”

At Sinai, having read God's words to the people and received their consent, Moses takes the blood of the sacrifices and sprinkles it on the people, declaring: behold, the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you. The covenant between God and his people is sealed with blood. And then, remarkably, Moses and the elders go up and see God, and eat and drink in his presence, a meal of covenant fellowship with the God who has bound himself to them.

What stands out is the phrase Moses speaks: the blood of the covenant. A covenant with God is no light thing; it is sealed with sacrifice, with blood. And these very words would sound again, centuries later, in an upper room, when Jesus took the cup and said, this is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many. The blood Moses sprinkled pointed forward to the blood of Christ, by which a new and better covenant would be sealed.

God binds himself to his people in covenant, and that covenant is sealed with blood, and its blessing is fellowship with him, seen in the elders who saw God and ate and drank in his presence. What was foreshadowed at Sinai is fulfilled in Christ, whose blood seals the new covenant and opens the way to fellowship with God at his own table.

Do I grasp the costliness and the wonder of the covenant God has made with his people, sealed not with the blood Moses sprinkled but with the blood of Christ, and do I come to the fellowship it opens, eating and drinking in the presence of the God who has bound himself to me?

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