Missions Paul

Exodus 24 is one of the most remarkable chapters in the Old Testament:-

* The elders see the God of Israel and eat and drink in His presence.

* The glory of the Lord settles on Sinai like a consuming fire.

* Moses disappears into the cloud for forty days and forty nights.

Before that, though, something happens at the foot of the mountain among ordinary people. The people read the covenant aloud and promise to obey. Then Moses takes the sacrifice’s blood and sprinkles it over the crowd.

We usually read this scene from a distance, as spectators. So this time, instead of commenting on it, I want to step into the crowd. What follows is an imagined story, but one faithful to the text, about an ordinary boy standing at the foot of the mountain on a day that was anything but ordinary.

First we read the chapter.

“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, ² but Moses alone is to approach the Lord; the others must not come near. And the people may not come up with him.” ³ When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” ⁴ Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said. He got up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up twelve stone pillars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. ⁵ Then he sent young Israelite men, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. ⁶ Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he splashed against the altar. ⁷ Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.” ⁸ Moses then took the blood, sprinkled 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.” ⁹ Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up ¹⁰ and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. ¹¹ But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. ¹² The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.” ¹³ Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. ¹⁴ He said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them.” 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 the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. ¹⁷ To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. ¹⁸ Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.” (Exodus 24)

A story.

It was not an ordinary day. But I am just an ordinary boy.

I didn’t fully understand everything, but our leader was in a season of amazing revelations from God, and they all took place on the special mountain.

He began to read instructions to us, which I can only categorise as IF, DO NOT, and MUST. Much of it didn’t apply to me directly; I was already doing some of it, but I was failing in what mattered, which deeply concerned me, even though I joined in unison, saying, “We will do everything the Lord has said.” That night I did not sleep, as I grew increasingly guilty and worried I would never meet the requirements.

The next morning, I awoke burdened by the shame of saying I would obey when I knew how impossible it would be for me. If I were in a court of law, I would be guilty as charged right then and there. Then it happened; it was amazing. Outside, we saw our leader had built an altar at the foot of the special mountain.

Animals were being killed, and their blood was divided into 2 parts; one went onto the altar and the other into large bowls.

Our leader repeated what he had said the day before, but this time he read it carefully from the book. Again, we all joined together and said “we will obey,” and again, I felt guilt and shame.

Just then, our leader began to sprinkle blood all over the crowd. And then it happened.

It was just one drop of blood.

It hit my forehead and ran down my face.

At first, it numbed me; then it was like a transfusion of new thoughts.

I no longer felt the raw shame and guilt.

I began to feel clean. I began to strangely feel forgiven.

Like, it was okay; it would all be okay. As if this life was possible. I could do this life because of the blood. So long as I had the blood of the sacrifice on me and the rest on the altar, then I would have peace between God and me.

I was just an ordinary boy, but this was no ordinary day.

Walking back home, determined not to wash off the bloodstain, I began to wish everyone could experience what I had done.

I wondered if the blood would still be sprinkled in 1500 years’ time. I wondered whether, in 3500 years’ time, ordinary people like me would still receive the blood of cleansing and forgiveness as I had that day. I hoped so.

Some things in our lives can’t be managed. They have to be thrown out. As Israel stood on the edge of the Promised Land, God made them extraordinary promises, but all of it came with one clear condition. The gods of the land weren’t to be tolerated or negotiated with; they were to be demolished.

“Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces. ²⁵ Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, ²⁶ and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full lifespan. ²⁷ “I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. ²⁸ I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. ²⁹ But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. ³⁰ Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land. ³¹ “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. ³² Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. ³³ 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.” (Exodus 23 v 24-33)

You cannot fully worship the Lord while keeping a shrine to something else in the corner of the field. That’s why “Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces” and “Worship the Lord your God” go hand in hand

Israel were called to be His exclusively.

Sadly, Israel made room for the idols of the other nations. By the time of Judges, the angel of the Lord was warning that the nations they had spared would become traps and their gods snares (Judges 2:3). What they refused to break eventually broke them.

Today idols have simply changed shape. Anything we trust for security or comfort in place of God is a sacred stone standing in our land.

So what should we do? Stop negotiating with what God has told us to remove. And give our worship, undivided, to the Lord who goes ahead of us.

Christ did not die to share His throne with our idols.

Are you wondering if it will ever happen? Maybe that is the question the Israelites asked as they faced their future.

God tells them what He would do and how He would do it.

“Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces. ²⁵ Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, ²⁶ and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span. ²⁷ “I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. ²⁸ I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. ²⁹ But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. ³⁰ Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land. ³¹ “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. ³² Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. ³³ 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.” (Exodus 23 v 24-33)

Sometimes we hold on to a promise bigger than our imagination. This is what the Israelites were told to do. They were told to believe they could enter and take the enemy cities that God had promised them. God tells them what He will do.

He will bless their bread and their water.

He will take sickness from among them.

He will give them a full lifespan.

He will send His terror ahead of them, so that enemies turn and run before a sword is drawn.

He will send the hornet ahead to clear the way.

These are wonderful promises, and today, with our modern minds, we ask impatiently, “When?” Perhaps they did too, because God answers before they ask.

“I will not drive them out in a single year.” Why not? Wouldn’t faster be better? God explains: the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply.

“Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.”

This is how God still works in His people. We often want deliverance immediately.

More often, He moves little by little, not only clearing ground, but growing us to occupy it.

From the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, from the desert to the Euphrates.

He goes ahead of us. He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion (Philippians 1:6).

Not all at once. But surely. Little by little.

“My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.” (Exodus 23 v 23)

Eventually, if you follow this blog, we will read about the enemies of God’s people.

Here are six of them: settled, strong nations vehemently opposed to the Israelites and their God.

God knows every enemy, every obstacle, and everything that opposes your destiny.

These ancient nations were not immovable; they, along with whatever stands in your way, are subject to God’s word.

Before the list of enemies comes the promise of presence: “My angel will go ahead of you.” The Angel of the Lord, the Son of God, would walk the road first. He would arrive at every battlefield before they did.

He still does.

Oh, and He knows the result before they begin. “I will wipe them out.”

God doesn’t ask us to be strong enough; sometimes He just tells us to follow Him.

What are you afraid of?

He is ahead of you already. He is in your tomorrow, and He wins.

Going on from yesterday’s message, we see that listening to ‘him’ is the same as obeying God. This is the angel of the Lord, the Son of God.

“If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.” (Exodus 23 v 22)

This beautiful ancient promise remains relevant today.

What was He saying?

If you truly heed his voice and obey everything I command, I will stand against your enemies and fight those who fight you.

What was He saying?

Listen closely to him and walk in all I tell you, and your battles become mine: whoever sets themselves against you will find me set against them.

What was He saying?

Pay careful attention to his word and keep all that I have spoken; then your enemies will be my enemies, and your adversaries my adversaries.

What was He saying?

When you hang on his every word and live out all I ask of you, you will never stand alone, because I will take your side against all who rise against you.

What was He saying?

Hear him well, obey me fully, and I will oppose all who oppose you.

Have you understood it?

It is true today.

Do you wonder about tomorrow? Are you concerned about what it will bring? Remember the old church song — Because He lives, I can face tomorrow? I am thinking of this as I write this blog this morning.

“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. ²¹ Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.” Exodus 23 v 20-21.

Isn’t it comforting to know you are not going it alone? God says here that He is sending an angel to guard you and bring you through, and all we have to do is pay attention, listen to him, and obey.

But who is this angel?

Angels generally refuse worship and point away from themselves. This one is spoken of in terms that belong to God alone. Israel must obey his voice. Most striking of all, God says, “My Name is in him.” In Scripture, God’s Name is His very self, His character and His presence. This angel does not merely carry a message from God. He carries God.

This is why many think the angel here is actually the Angel of the Lord, a pre-incarnate appearance of the Son. Both Isaiah (63:9) and Paul (1 Corinthians 10:4) believed in the theophany of the Son of God.

Interestingly, His role is “to bring you to the place I have prepared,” and Jesus said, “I am going there to prepare a place for you… I will come back and take you to be with me” (John 14:2–3). The angel of Exodus brings Israel to “the place I have prepared.” Jesus brings His people to the place He has prepared.

You do not do life alone. Christ goes ahead of you, and because you follow Him, you pay attention to Him and obey Him.

The question for today, then, is not only “Is He with me?” but “Am I listening to Him?”

Most of us live by our diaries. Is this week busy for you? Will God have to take whatever space is left?

Before anything happened, God wrote his appointments into the Israelites’ diary first.

“Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me. ¹⁵ “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt. “No one is to appear before me empty-handed. ¹⁶ “Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. “Celebrate the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field. ¹⁷ “Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord. ¹⁸ “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast. “The fat of my festival offerings must not be kept until morning. ¹⁹ “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God. “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” (Exodus 23 v 14-19)

Three times a year, God said, “Stop what you are doing and come meet with me.” In this diary of festivals, we also see the shape of the gospel.

Unleavened Bread remembered the redemption when God brought them out of Egypt so quickly their dough had no time to rise. “Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”. (1 Corinthians 5 v 7-8)

The Festival of Harvest celebrated the firstfruits of the crops, the first sign that the seed in the ground had not died for nothing. “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15 v 20)  Fifty days later, at the Feast of Harvest, the Spirit was poured out and “Those who accepted his message were baptised, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.” (Acts 2 v 41)

The Festival of Ingathering came at the end of the year, when everything was finally brought home. We might say we are living in the Acts 29 moment; the Spirit’s work continues, and an ingathering is still to come.

So God not only gives these 3 great festivals, fulfilled much later. He also sets the terms of how we come to Him. God doesn’t want the time left over at the end of a busy week or the energy after we have worked for everyone and everything else. Nor do we “appear before me empty-handed.” This is not to earn anything but because He has already given to bring us out.

One final thought on the strange verse, “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” It is a bit strange and hard to understand. One possibility is that it prohibited a practice associated with the religious customs of Israel’s neighbours. Whatever the precise background, Israel was taught to live differently from the surrounding nations and to follow the Lord’s instructions rather than simply adopt their customs. That principle still matters.

“For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, ¹¹ but during the seventh year let the land lie unploughed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. ¹² “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed. ¹³ “Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.” (Exodus 23 v 10-13)

At first, I am sure no farmer thought this made sense. Every seventh year, do not plough, do not sow, and do not harvest.

This was a test of trust. Six years were to carry them through the seventh. That was God’s promise. He would do it.

But notice who benefits, for this is not to help the landowner. God has his eye on the poor and even the wild animals.

God insists on rest not only for our sake but for others. It is always about others. The same was true of the weekly Sabbath. God’s rest flowed downhill, to those with the least power to claim it for themselves.

That is still the test of our rest.

We must take the weekly Sabbath and, if possible, a sabbatical in the seventh year.

The most important thing is this: God wants us to build rest into our lives.

Not just for ourselves, but for others.

How can we help the vulnerable, those still working hard, overlooked, and in need, as we take rest? That’s what we should be asking.

The inability to rest is often a kind of idolatry. We can’t stop for all kinds of reasons. But the drug is usually because something else has become our provider.

God commands rest because he is enough.

Perhaps a field in your life needs to lie fallow for a while. Not because you are failing, but because you are trusting.

The land rested because God provided. So can you.

Today’s social media feed featured a picture of one of my Pastor friends. Actually, it was a before-and-after picture. They look very different, and not because of age. He wrote alongside the picture, “I am 20 years free from heroin addiction today.” It is a lovely post. It ends with, “If He can do this for me, He can do it for anybody. Roll on the next 20 years. God gets all the glory.”

Very timely as I turn to verse 9.

“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” (Exodus 23 v 9)

You know this, for you were foreigners. You’ve been there, and you know how it feels.

That’s what God was saying to them about foreigners.

God was causing them to remember the difficult days, not so they would look and become hardened, but so they would remember how it felt and become compassionate toward those in the same position.

Painful times can sometimes make us even harder. But God insisted that they must never do to others what had been done to them.

God doesn’t erase our history; instead, He redeems it and puts it to work.

Paul reminds Gentile believers that they were once “foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Every Christian was once an outsider; we had a past. We were brought near, not because we belonged but because Christ made room for us at great cost.

Have we forgotten where we came from? A church that remembers its own Egypt will never be a hostile place for the outsider. It will be the place where strangers discover they’ve come home.

We know how it feels. Let’s make sure no one else has to feel it among us.

Sometimes bribes come as a favour we can’t refuse. 

“Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.” Exodus 23:8

It’s not the ignorant a bribe blinds. It’s those who see clearly. And it rarely looks like a bribe. It looks like a favour or a gift.

Judas took thirty pieces of silver and could no longer see who Jesus was. The chief priests paid soldiers to twist the testimony about the empty tomb (Matthew 28:12–13). But Jesus was offered the greatest bribe of all, all the kingdoms of the world, and refused (Matthew 4:8–10). He would not take a shortcut to the throne. He took the cross.

So ask yourself: what has been given to you that makes it harder to see clearly? A position or someone’s approval?

The One who could not be bought has already paid for you.