God is getting ready to institute His covenant with His people, Israel. However, this covenant will be based on loyalty: loyalty to God by Israel and loyalty to Israel by God. God’s expectations of loyalty from Israel are inextricably linked to the loyalty that Israel can depend on from God. Further, Israel’s loyalty is an outgrowth of God’s stated loyalty to them.
Read Exodus 23:20-22
Excursus on “The Angel of the Lord”
Some of this is a repeat of what we went over in Lesson 2.
We are to remember that “angel” means “messenger.” It may be a heavenly being we usually associate with the word angel. In other places, people are angels, as they speak what God has given them to speak. However, here the angel is the pre-incarnate Christ, who is doing what God the Father has given Him to do.
Now, how do we know this is the case and not simply pastor’s opinion? In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul speaks of Christ being present with Israel as they traveled through the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt. Paul refers to Christ as the “spiritual Rock”: “They [the Old Testament people of Israel] all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from a spiritual rock that went with then, and that rock was Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10:3-4)
And so when we read in the Old Testament about “the angel of the LORD,” we should first think of the pre-incarnate Christ, not an angelic being.
Knowing this, we see the pre-incarnate Christ appears to:
- Hagar as a man (Genesis 16:7),
- Abraham, as one of three visitors (18:1-2) or as a voice from heaven (22:11),
- Joshua, as the commander of God’s army (Joshua 5: 13-15), and
- Balaam, as an angel with a drawn sword (Numbers 22:31).
In Exodus 3, Moses uses “angel of the LORD,” “God,” and “Lord” interchangeably to describe who came to him in the burning bush. This lets us know that the expression “angel of the LORD” in Exodus refers to God revealing himself in a special way, not simply an angelic being.
– What does God promise to do if Israel listens to His voice and does what He says?
– We can see in verse 22 a preview of the Covenant that God is getting ready to institute? Even here, how is it different from the New Covenant that superseded the Old Covenant?
Read Exodus 23:23-24
– What are the people not to do with the Canaanite gods?
– What does breaking down their pillars have anything to do with that?
God’s promised blessings to His people
Read Exodus 23:25-30
– What does God promise to do?
– Looking back after the fact, did these things happen (no disease, miscarriages, long life)?
– Did God make such external promises for us in the New Covenant?
– What does this say about Israel’s faith and loyalty to God?
– How was the conquest of the Land to take place?
Israel’s Loyalty to God
Read Exodus 23:31-33
These verses state how Israel is to be loyal to God.
– How do these two verses begin?
– What does that have to do with following what God tells His people to do?
The Old Covenant Ratified
Read Exodus 24:1-11
Exodus 24:1-11 uses a chiastic literary structure to highlight the covenant between God and His people. In a chiasm, the main point is also the center point of the chiasm. In this case, it’s the sacrifices and blood ceremony.
– Moses repeats what God had said. Repeating the words (davarim) refers to what?
– Repeating the “rules” (mishpatim) refers to what?
– The chiastic structure points us to the sacrifices and blood ceremony being the center of what taking place. What did Moses do with the blood? What was taking place?
– Relate the newly given Old Covenant to the New Covenant (Lord’s Supper) that Jesus will institute. How is blood involved? What is the equivalent in the Lord’s Supper to being sprinkled with blood?
– If the sacrifices and blood ceremony was the center of the Old Covenant, what is the center of the New Covenant for us?
– What does this say about the role of the Lord’s Supper in our lives?
– Discuss how Moses and the elders “saw” God?
– What did Moses and the Elders do in the presence of God?
– Pointing forward to the Old Covenant’s fulfillment in the New, how does this affirm Jesus’ “real presence” in the Lord’s Supper and what takes place there?
In the New Covenant, the blood and the meal are brought together in the Lord’s Supper (Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, and 1 Cor. 11:25) put into effect through the death of Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant (Hebrews 9:15–22).
Moses goes to receive the Law (Torah) and Commandments (Mitzvoth)
Read Exodus 24:12-14
– When Moses is gone, who is to help adjudicate for him when he’s on the mountain?
– Aaron was Moses’ brother. Why does Moses possibly mention Hur?
Read Exodus 24:15-18
The Glory of Yahweh
The Old Testament tells us of God being present with His people by dwelling in the tabernacle and later in the Temple (Exodus 25:8, 1 Kings 8:11, 57-58). However, in these verses, we find God dwelling with Moses in what appears to be a cloud and what is called the glory of Yahweh. This was a manifestation of God the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah, the “cloud,” the “glory of Yahweh” (Exodus 40:34-35). In the Temple, there God dwelled to be with His people (Deuteronomy 31:6; 1 Kings 8:11; 2 Kings 13:23; Haggai 1:13, 2:5).
– God has Moses wait for six days before He calls him out of the cloud on the seventh? How does this fit into the Sabbath cycle that God instituted?
– What implication does this have for what is going the happen next?
– What does this glory of Yahweh look like to the people of Israel?
– How long did Moses stay on the mountain?
Moses remained on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. We see the number 40 elsewhere in Scripture: Elijah’s journey to Horeb (1 Kings 19: 1-9), Christ’s temptation in the desert (Matthew 4: 1- 11), and Israel’s wandering in the wilderness (Numbers 14). In each case, it involved a time of testing as well as of strengthening by a merciful Lord.
Click here to go to Lesson 20.
