Before Moses vanished into the cloud on Sinai, something happened at the foot of the mountain that shows how God makes a covenant with people who cannot keep it.
“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.” (Exodus 24 v 1-8)
1. At Sinai, Israel promised with one voice to obey everything the Lord had said, yet within weeks they were dancing around a golden calf.
We do the same. We make sincere commitments at the altar on Sunday, and we often break them by midweek. Our failures do not surprise God, and they should not drive us away from Him.
2. The covenant was never sealed by their promise but by the blood, half splashed on the altar and half sprinkled on the people.
Your standing with God does not rise and fall with your spiritual performance this week. When guilt tells you that you have blown it again, point it to the blood, which has already satisfied God and has been applied to you.
3. Fifteen hundred years later, Jesus lifted a cup and said, “This is my blood of the covenant,” and now our hope holds not because we hold on, but because the blood holds.
The next time you take Communion, come to receive what He has already done. Rest your weight on His faithfulness, and let obedience grow out of gratitude rather than fear.
