Sovereign Grace Baptist Church

Free Grace Media

Of Princeton, New Jersey

 

AuthorClay Curtis
TitleBeholding the New In the Old
Bible TextExodus 24:1-11
Synopsis As God through Moses made the old covenant with the temporal nation Israel, in type, we behold God through Christ making the new covenant with each of his spiritual elect Israel. Listen
Date07-Jul-2019
Series Exodus 2016
Article Type Sermon Notes
PDF Format pdf
Word Format doc
Audio HI-FI Listen: Beholding the New In the Old (32 kbps)
Audio CD Quality Listen: Beholding the New In the Old (128 kbps)
Length 36 min.
 

Series: Exodus

Title: Beholding the New in the Old

Text: Ex 24: 1-11

Date: July 7, 2019

Place: SGBC, NJ

 

Our text shows the most important event in the history of Israel as a nation: God entered into covenant with Israel as a political nation making them his nation.  This was most important to Israel because by it, Israel was formally set apart as the people of God as a nation.  It was important because this was the foundation of all ceremonial worship which followed in Israel. Only after this event took place did God institute the Tabernacle, the priesthood, and all its services.

 

This event pictures that which is the greatest event in the history of each of God’s elect.  It typifies that which sets us apart as God’s own.  This is the way we are brought into true spiritual worship of God.  It is by God making his everlasting covenant of grace with us.

 

Proposition: As God through Moses made the old covenant with the temporal nation Israel, in type, we behold God through Christ making the new covenant with each of his spiritual elect Israel.

 

Title: Beholding the New in the Old

 

BEHOLD THE NEW MEDIATOR IN THE OLD

Exodus 24: 1: And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off. 2: And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him. 3: And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD…

 

Only Moses was allowed to draw near to God. Why not the others?  Every person God shall save is a sinner by nature.  In Adam in the garden, we broke God’s law and we are conceived with Adam’s corrupt nature.   By not allowing these other children of Israel to draw near, God declares that no sinner—not even those God elected to save—can approach God while guilty and having a defiled nature. 

 

But God provided a Way in the Mediator, his Son, Christ Jesus, typified here in Moses.  Moses alone went up to God.  Then Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD.  As Moses was the mediator of that old covenant so Christ is the Mediator of the new covenant, the new testament (Heb 9: 15).

 

The only way to draw near to God is Christ Jesus the Mediator.  Christ is the only way to God.  "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;” (1Ti 2:5)  “Jesus saith…I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (Joh 14:6)

 

Illustration: Jaybird—all the cases before him without an advocate.

 

Sinner, we all shall stand before God in his holy courtroom one day.  Never imagine that there is any other way to come to be accepted of God. Come to God through faith in Christ and Christ shall represent you to the Father!

 

BEHOLD THE NEW AND LIVING WAY IN THE OLD CEREMONIAL WAY

Exodus 24: 3  And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.  4: And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5: And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD. 6: And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 7: And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient. 8: And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.


God is making a covenant with the nation Israel.  “All the words of the LORD” are the ten commandments from Exodus 20.  All the judgments” are the statutes from Exodus 21-23.  This was a conditional covenant, a covenant of works. God said,

 

Exodus 20: 5: Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people:

 

The first covenant was a covenant of works, a legal covenant.  God’s blessings were conditioned on the children of Israel keeping the law.  God said, “If ye will then I shall…”  Sadly, ignorantly, the children of Israel did what all unregenerate sinners do—"all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.”  God heard them and God said,  “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever” (De 5:27-29)! 

 

Please get this!  No sinner has ever obeyed the law by the works of his own hands—not one.  The law was given ONLY to give the knowledge of sin.  This is God’s own word, “there is none righteous, no, not one.” “What things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.  Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom 3: 19).

 

Since God’s elect cannot keep our end of the covenant—since we cannot keep the law—God sent forth Christ to keep our end of the covenant for us.  In eternity, God the Father and God the Son entered covenant. None of God’s elect were given a part to do.  God the Father entered covenant to send Christ to be the High Priest of his people—to live and die under the law for his elect with this promise, "if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine” (Ex 20: 5).  As the Surety and Head of his people, Christ promised the Father, “All the words which the LORD hath said WILL I DO” (v3)

 

So we see how the new covenant differs from the old: the old was conditioned on the sinner’s obedience to the law in thought, word and deed. But the new covenant is conditioned on Christ’s obedience to the law for his people. Therefore, the new covenant is not a covenant of works but a covenant of grace. 

 

Therefore, everything Moses did here is a picture of Christ’s work.  In all that Moses did, we behold Christ in type.  We behold the new and living way in Moses performing the old, ceremonial way:

·         Moses wrote all the words of the Lord” in “the book of the covenant.”  Moses wrote the words of the covenant in a book.  He wrote the law which the children of Israel agreed to keep as their end of the covenant of works.  But when Christ came to represent his people, Christ did not write the law in a book, Christ said, “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Ps 40:8).  Christ’s holy heart was full of faith and fidelity to God his Father from the womb to the end of his life.  Therefore, he kept the whole law in perfect righteousness for his people.

·         Moses rose up early in the morning.” Christ said, “I must be about my Father’s business” (Lu 2: 49).

·         “Moses builded an altar under the hill”  This was an altar on which the sacrifice would be laid.  Christ is our Altar.  The Hebrew writer said, “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate” (Heb 13: 10-12).  In the incarnation, God prepared a body for his Son like unto his brethren.  That body was the altar of Christ’s sacrifice.  As Moses built his altar under the hill, under the law, so Christ was “made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that we under the law” (Gal 4: 4-5).

·         “Moses built twelve pillars” This showed that everything Moses did was on behalf of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Moses did nothing for the nations surrounding Israel, only for the children of Israel.  Everything Christ did was on behalf of God’s elect spiritual Israel.

·         “And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD”  These young men represented priests since there was no priesthood yet.  Christ is the High Priest of his people.  These burnt offerings and peace offerings are how the children of Israel made covenant with God.  We see that in the Psalms, “Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice” (Ps 50:5)  That is what Christ did for his people.  Christ fulfilled the new covenant with God on our behalf by fulfilling the law.  Christ did so not by the blood of bulls and goats, but by his own blood, sacrificing himself under the justice of God’s offended law in place of his people. That is what Christ meant when he instituted his table.  The wine represents his blood poured out to fulfill the covenant with God for his people. So Christ said, “This is the new testament in my blood” (Lu 22: 20).

·         “And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar”  The blood Moses sprinkled on the altar was to ceremonially satisfy God for the sins of the people.  Christ satisfied God for his people by his one offering.  He justified us, making us the righteousness of God in him.  We see what Moses did with the rest of the blood next.

 

·         “And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient”  Moses read the words of the covenant bringing forth a confession from the children of Israel who agreed to keep the covenant.  Christ writes the gospel on our hearts declaring how Christ has kept the law for us.  By the Holy Ghost bearing witness in our hearts and purging our hearts with the blood of Christ, he brings forth a confession from us of faith in Christ.  We keep our end of the covenant through faith in Christ who kept it for us.  “And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.”  Moses sprinkled the rest of the blood on the book and the people as he said this.  This ceremonially sanctified them to God.  This is how Christ brings us to confess Christ by sprinkling the blood of Christ within us, purging our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.  All of this typifies Christ’s blood by which he sanctifies his people, separating us unto God.  We see it in Hebrews 9.

 

Hebrews 9: 14  How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 15: And for this cause he [Christ] is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

 

Notice he said that we might receive “promise of eternal inheritance.”  The first covenant was not spiritual, nor eternal, only a temporal covenant of works promising earthly, temporal blessings in the temporal land of Canaan.  The new covenant is spiritual and eternal, a covenant of grace.  God’s promises spiritual blessings and an eternal, heavenly inheritance.

 

Hebrews 9: 16: For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. 17: For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth. 18: Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood. 19: For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people, 20: Saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. 21: Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. 22: And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. 23: It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24: For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: 25: Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; 26: For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27: And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: 28: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

 

So sinner, do not attempt to come to God under that legal, covenant of works.  Come to God trusting Christ.  It is by the new covenant that God makes us his.  “Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine” (Eze 16: 8).

 

BEHOLD OUR NEW RELATIONSHIP TO GOD IN THE OLD

 

The chapter began with the people unable to come near to God.  What about now?  Exodus 24: 9: Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: 10: And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. 11: And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.

 

Bless God, today, believers can draw near to God because by sprinkling the blood of Christ upon us and by bearing witness in our hearts, God has made with us an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure and this is all our salvation.

 

Hebrews 10: 15: Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, 16  This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; 17: And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. 18: Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. 19: Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20: By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; 21: And having an high priest over the house of God; 22: Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.

 

That day, God fed the children of Israel on the sacrifices the young men had offered which he had accepted.  We feed upon Christ our Bread and the Wine of his blood.  Their meal meant fellowship-acceptance with God.  We have fellowship with God in Christ. So today Christ invites all his saints to his table.

 

Luke 22: 19: And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. 20: Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

 

This meal is a foretaste and pledge of that day when we shall behold Christ face to face and feast at the great marriage supper of the Lamb.

 

Amen!