We’ve
been reflecting on worship since Easter, and this morning we’re ending our short,
often interrupted series by entering this story of God meeting with Moses and
the leaders of Israel on Mount Sinai. As part of this meeting, we discover an
unexpected meal happens after a time of worship that includes a blood
sacrifice. It’s important to understand what’s been happening to understand what’s
happening. The people have been camped out at Mount Sinai for a short time now,
God has given the people the Ten Commandments and reminds them that the reason
for keeping the commands is because God has freed them from slavery and he is
their God. God has placed his claim on them. The Israelites receive these
commands as a gift; God’s setting out what his expectations are for them; there’s
no need to guess what it means, or looks like, to be his people. The
relationship between God and Israel is clear, something no other nation or
people has with their gods. This is a huge source of comfort for the people.
God
gives them 3 festivals a year where the men are to gather to celebrate to God
and offer the sacrifices God commands of them, no one is to come empty handed
before God. God then tells the people that he’s sending an angel to bring them
to the place he has prepared; the Promised Land. God then gives them this
command about the Promised Land, “Do
not make a covenant with them or with their gods. Do not let them live in your
land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their
gods will certainly be a snare to you.” With
this in mind, we get a better understanding of what God’s doing her; he’s confirming
his covenant promises with Israel through Moses and the other leaders in
Israel. God invites Moses to meet with him on the mountain, the holy sacred
mountain that no one is supposed to set a foot on unless they’re invited by
God.
Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 other leaders are invited to come on the mountain with
Moses. When Moses tells the people what God has said and all the laws he’s
given, they reply, “Everything the Lord has said we
will do,” confirming that they’ve accepted God’s gift of the law and
have committed themselves to obedience. The next morning, before Moses and the
others head up the mountain, Moses builds an altar and they all offer burnt and
blood offerings as fellowship offerings to the Lord. Then Moses does something
we find a bit disturbing; he takes half of the blood from the bulls that were
sacrificed and he splashes it against the altar. This blood splashed on the
altar is a symbol of God’s forgiveness of their sin and that he accepts their
offering.
Then Moses takes the Book of the Covenant, reads it to the people and they respond as they did
the day before, “We will do everything the Lord has
said; we will obey.” Then Moses takes the second half of the blood and
sprinkles it all over the people! This blood is a symbol of the seriousness of
the oath they have just made to God to obey his commands and to be his people. Moses,
when he sprinkles it on the people says, “This is the
blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all
these words.” The blood is a visible sign of the covenant, the promises
made between God and Israel, that they’ve just made. The people wear this blood
on them until they wash again. Everyone can see the blood sprinkled on themselves,
just as they can see it sprinkled on everyone else. It binds them together as
God’s people. It echoes back to Egypt and the blood on their doorposts that
protected them from God’s wrath and the angel of death; this blood represents
forgiveness and protection from the punishment they deserve because of their
sin.
Rev
James Wharton of Princeton writes, “what kind of role do those ancient
rituals play in the life of Israel.... Gerhard von Rad in Volume One of his
theology…. says each one of these little strange and, to us, confusing yet
obscure details, describes an area, a sphere, a part of life on which the right
of God's claim is stamped. It's not so important that one understand why one does
a certain thing as it is important to understand that in that sphere of life
the Lord God has a claim and by responding affirmatively in that particular
instance, even according to an old half-understood or forgotten rite or ritual,
one is affirming the right of God over all of Life…. That enormous
determination to try to order life in such a way that you say yes to God and
God said don't do that and that's sufficient…. this ancient rite of the blood
now becomes part of this affirmation that God has laid a claim on life and that
claim is to be respected and honored at all costs.”
Now
Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the 70 elders go up the
mountain and they see God! Think about this! Moses writes, “But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the
Israelites.” So, what do these leaders do while they are on the mountain
with God? They see God and then they eat and drink; they have a meal. This is
all in the context of the covenant promises that are tying God and Israel
closer together. The giving of the gift of the Law, the time of worship and sacrifice,
and now this meal are all connected together, acts that draw God and his people
closer together. Our relationship with God is not simply based on believing in
the right things about God, it’s a faith that’s lived out in our daily lives
through worship, obedience, and offering our lives to Jesus to be used for his
kingdom.
This
is what our sacraments do, they draw us closer to God and each other in the
act of eating in the Lord’s Supper, in the act of sprinkling water in baptism,
all in the context of worship and recommitting ourselves to following Jesus.
This meal on the mountain echoes ahead to Jesus’ meal with his disciples just
before his crucifixion. In Matthew 26, we see Jesus
giving us what we now call the Lord’s Supper, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he
had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and
eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he
gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Jesus ties this meal and his coming sacrifice to the covenants in the Old Testament, to the
festivals God gave Israel in Leviticus, to the new covenant written on our
hearts mentioned by Jeremiah, “The days
are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the
people of Israel and with the people of Judah…. “This is the covenant I will
make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put
my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and
they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one
another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them
to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and
will remember their sins no more.”
The Lord’s Supper and baptism are acts or sacraments
given to us to help us grow deeper in our
faith, to recommit ourselves to obedience to Jesus’ commands to us out of
gratitude for what Jesus has done for us through the cross, washing away our
sin, giving us life, new life. In giving us these sacraments, God seals our
relationship to him through the working of the Holy Spirit who draws us closer
to Jesus and his love expressed in these acts. It’s like the wedding ring in
western cultures that couples give each other when they get married. Every time
they see the ring on their finger, they’re reminded of the promises they’ve
made to each other. The rings work as a seal in their relationships, showing
the world that they’ve committed to love and honour each other through the good
times and the hard times. In the sacraments we tell God and the world that we
are committed to God and each other through good times and hard times.
The reality is that we will fail in our relationships with each other, especially in our relationship with
God, but we are reassured in the meal and the water that God always holds up
his side of the commitment through Jesus’ sacrifice and the Holy Spirit, drawing
us back into relationship again and again. As the song writer tells us, “To this I hold, my
hope is only Jesus. For my life is wholly bound to His. Oh, how strange and
divine, I can sing, "All is mine," Yet not I, but through Christ in
me.”
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