Exodus 24 — The Covenant Sealed in Blood

Today’s Passage: Exodus 24

We come now to one of the great high places of the whole book, the day the covenant God has been building toward at Sinai is at last sealed, and I would have you take off your shoes, as it were, and read it slowly. The law has been given, and now it must be ratified, made binding between the holy God on the mountain and the people trembling below, and God chooses to bind the two together in blood. Moses builds an altar at the foot of the mountain and raises twelve pillars beside it, one for each tribe, and the young men offer burnt offerings and peace offerings, and Moses catches the blood in bowls. Then, twice over, the people pledge with one voice that all the LORD has spoken they will do. Half the blood Moses splatters on the altar, which stands for God, and half he sprinkles on the people, and over them he speaks the words that will echo down all the ages: this is the blood of the covenant. And then comes a thing so astonishing the Bible states it almost plainly and hurries on, that Moses and Aaron and seventy elders climb the mountain and see the God of Israel, with a pavement like sapphire beneath His feet, and they eat and drink in His presence and live. At the last Moses goes up alone into the cloud of glory, into what looks to the watching camp like a consuming fire, and there he stays forty days and forty nights to receive the tablets of stone. Watch the blood in this chapter above all else, for when the Lord Jesus took the cup in the upper room, He reached back to this very day and this very phrase, and told His disciples that His own blood was the blood of a covenant far better than this one.

As you read, hold this: God bound Himself and His people together with the blood of the covenant, a blood that pointed all along to the cup Christ would lift on the night He was betrayed.

Exodus 24:1-2 (BSB)

¹ Then the LORD said to Moses, “Come up to the LORD—you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders—and you are to worship at a distance. ² Moses alone shall approach the LORD, but the others must not come near. And the people may not go up with him.”

The chapter begins with an invitation and a boundary held together in the same breath, and both are mercy. Come up to the LORD, God says, and He names them: Aaron and his two eldest sons, and seventy of the elders of Israel, a company chosen to draw near on behalf of the whole nation. That God should call sinful men up His holy mountain at all is grace beyond telling. But notice at once how the nearness is measured out. They are to worship at a distance, and Moses alone may approach the LORD, and the people may not go up with him at all. There are degrees of drawing near, and no one crosses them uninvited.

Do not read the boundary as coldness. It is the same holiness that made the mountain shake, teaching a redeemed people that they cannot rush the presence of God as they please. Even in an hour of covenant and welcome, God guards His holiness, calling some near, some nearer, and one nearest of all, so that Israel learns that access to God is always His gift and never their right. And there is a foreshadowing in it too, for the day was coming when One would go up the true mountain and open a way for all His people to draw near, not at a distance, but into the very presence of God through His blood.

Exodus 24:3-4 (BSB)

³ When Moses came and told the people all the words and ordinances of the LORD, they all responded with one voice: “All the words that the LORD has spoken, we will do.” ⁴ And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. Early the next morning he got up and built an altar at the base of the mountain, along with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel.

Moses comes down and lays before the people everything the LORD has spoken, holding nothing back, and the whole camp answers together as with a single throat: all the words that the LORD has spoken, we will do. There is something moving in that united yes, a whole nation binding itself in one voice to the God who redeemed it, and it is right and good that a rescued people should long to obey. Yet the reader who knows what lies ahead cannot hear the promise without a catch in his heart, for this is the same people who within forty days will be dancing around a golden calf. The willing heart means its vow truly and still cannot keep it, and that is the whole reason a better covenant had to come.

Then Moses does two careful things at the foot of the mountain. First he writes down all the words of the LORD, for a covenant must be recorded and fixed, not left to memory that fades. And then, rising early in the morning, he builds an altar and sets up twelve pillars beside it, one for each tribe of Israel. See what those stones say. The altar stands for God, the One to whom the sacrifice ascends, and the twelve pillars stand for the whole people, every tribe present and accounted for. Before a drop of blood is shed, the scene is arranged so that God and His people stand together at one place, which is exactly what a covenant is meant to make: two parties bound as one.

Exodus 24:5-6 (BSB)

⁵ Then he sent out some young men of Israel, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the LORD. ⁶ Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he splattered on the altar.

Now the sacrifices are made, and each kind of offering carries its own note. The burnt offerings ascend wholly to God, the whole animal given up in the flame, a picture of total consecration, a people surrendered entirely to the LORD. The peace offerings, the fellowship offerings, speak of communion restored, of a shared meal between God and His people, and they will lead directly to the astonishing supper on the mountain a few verses on. Together they say what the day is about: a people wholly given to God and brought into fellowship with Him.

And then comes the blood, and here we must slow down, for everything now turns on it. Moses takes the blood of the sacrifices and divides it into two portions, catching half in bowls and dashing the other half against the altar. The altar, remember, stands for God. So one half of the covenant blood is applied to God’s side first, for the covenant must be sealed toward Him before it can be sealed toward the people. Hold that divided blood in your mind, half on the altar and half kept back in the bowls, because in the next two verses those bowls will be lifted over the heads of Israel, and the same blood that touched the altar of God will fall upon the people, binding the two together as nothing else could.

Exodus 24:7-8 (BSB)

⁷ Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people, who replied, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” ⁸ So Moses took the blood, splattered it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

Here we come to the height of the whole chapter, and I would have you read these two verses as slowly as you have ever read anything. First Moses takes the Book of the Covenant, the words he had written down, and reads them aloud over the people, so that no one could later say he had bound himself blindly. And the people answer a second time, fuller than before: all that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient. The covenant is read, the covenant is agreed, and now the covenant must be sealed.

So Moses takes the blood from the bowls, the very blood whose other half already stains the altar of God, and he sprinkles it over the people, and over them he speaks the words that will never be forgotten: this is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you. Think of what those words declare. One blood has now touched both parties, the altar that stands for God and the people who stand before Him, and by that shared blood the two are bound into a single covenant that only death could seal. Blood was the price and the pledge, the solemn sign that this bond was no light thing, that it was sealed in life poured out. A covenant sprinkled in blood cannot be treated as a small matter; it binds with the weight of death itself.

And no Christian can read the phrase this is the blood of the covenant without his heart going straight to an upper room in Jerusalem, on the night the Lord Jesus was betrayed. For there He took the cup, and He reached back across fifteen centuries to this very mountain and this very sentence, and He said, this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. What Moses did at Sinai with the blood of bulls, Christ was about to do with His own blood on the cross, sealing a new and better covenant, not sprinkling us from the outside but cleansing us within, binding God and His people together forever in a bond that can never be broken. The old covenant blood at the foot of Sinai was always a shadow, held up to teach Israel to wait for the true blood of the true covenant that would be shed at Calvary.

Exodus 24:9-11 (BSB)

⁹ Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, ¹⁰ and they saw the God of Israel. Under His feet was a work like a pavement made of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. ¹¹ But God did not lay His hand on the nobles of Israel; they saw Him, and they ate and drank.

Now the covenant is sealed, and something happens that the Bible states almost quietly, as though words could barely hold it. The leaders go up the mountain, and they saw the God of Israel. Read that line and let it stop you. Later in this same book God will tell Moses that no man can see His face and live, and yet here, on the far side of the covenant blood, seventy-four men are given a sight of God and are not destroyed. The Scripture does not try to describe Him; it turns instead to what lay beneath His feet, a pavement like sapphire, clear and blazing blue as the very sky, as though the floor of heaven itself had come down upon the mountain. What they saw of God was beyond telling, but even the ground beneath Him shone like the pure sky, and that alone was glory enough to fill a lifetime of memory.

And then comes the tenderest line of all: God did not lay His hand on the nobles of Israel; they saw Him, and they ate and drank. Feel the mercy pressed into that single sentence. Sinful men gazed upon the living God, and He did not stretch out His hand against them, did not consume them as the mountain had every reason to fear. Instead, on the far side of the blood of the covenant, they sat down in His presence and ate and drank, a covenant meal shared with God Himself. This is what the blood makes possible. Apart from it, to see God is to die; but on the ground of the covenant sealed in blood, the same men who could not touch the base of the mountain a chapter ago now feast before His face and live. It is a small foretaste of the great feast to come, when all the people of God, cleansed by the blood of the true covenant, will sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb and see Him as He is, and live forever in the sight of the God whose blood brought them home.

Exodus 24:12-14 (BSB)

¹² Then the LORD said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and stay here, so that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.” ¹³ So Moses set out with Joshua his attendant and went up on the mountain of God. ¹⁴ And he said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we return to you. Aaron and Hur are here with you. Whoever has a dispute can go to them.”

The covenant meal is ended, and God calls Moses higher still, up onto the mountain to stay, so that He may give him the tablets of stone written with His own hand, the law and the commandments for the instruction of the people. There is grace even in that word written, for God does not leave His covenant to the frailty of memory; He engraves it in stone, fixed and lasting, so that Israel will have His will before them in a form that cannot fade. The Mediator is summoned to receive the abiding word of God on behalf of a people who cannot climb the mountain themselves.

And notice how carefully Moses provides for the camp before he goes. He takes Joshua his attendant partway up the mountain of God, and he leaves Aaron and Hur to settle whatever disputes may arise while he is gone, telling the elders simply to wait for his return. It is the mark of a faithful mediator that he does not forget the people while he ascends to God; he leaves them cared for, provided with judges, told to wait. Yet even the best of provisions could not keep them, for we know that in the very weeks of this waiting the people would grow restless and turn to a calf of gold. The failure, when it comes, will not be for lack of a good mediator, but because the human heart cannot keep itself while it waits, and that is why we needed a Mediator who not only ascends for us but keeps us to the end.

Exodus 24:15-18 (BSB)

¹⁵ When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, ¹⁶ and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered it, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud. ¹⁷ And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop in the eyes of the Israelites. ¹⁸ Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

And so the chapter closes in cloud and fire and glory. Moses goes up, and the cloud swallows the mountain, and the glory of the LORD settles upon Sinai. For six days the cloud rests there, and Moses waits at its edge in silence, until on the seventh day God calls to him out of the midst of it. There is instruction even in that waiting. God does not always speak the moment we arrive; sometimes He bids His servant wait six days in the cloud before the voice comes, teaching that the glory of God is not to be hurried, and that those who would receive His word must learn to wait in reverence until He is ready to speak.

And see how the glory looked to the people down in the camp: like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain. The same glory that shone as clear sapphire to the elders who ate and drank before God now burned like a devouring flame in the eyes of Israel below. God’s glory is one, but it is felt according to where one stands, as fellowship to those the blood has brought near, and as a consuming fire to those who watch from a distance. Into that fire Moses walked. He entered the cloud, the Bible says, and went up, and there he remained forty days and forty nights, alone with God on behalf of the people, the mediator swallowed up in the glory so that he might bring the word of God down to those who could not climb. It is a picture that reaches forward to a greater Mediator still, who entered not a cloud on a mountain but the very presence of God in heaven, and who by the blood of an eternal covenant has opened the way for His people to follow where He has gone.