Exodus 24:1-18

Our reading today is from Exodus chapter twenty-four, verses one to eighteen.

Then he said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Mabihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar.

Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules, and all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.

And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.

He rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.

And Moses took half of the blood and took it and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar.

Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.

And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel.

There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.

And he did not lay his head on the chiefmen of the people of Israel.

They beheld God and ate and drank.

The Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.

So Moses rose with his assistant, Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God, and he said to the elders, Wait here for us until we return to you.

And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you.

Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them.

Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain.

The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days.

And on the seventh day he called Moses out of the midst of the cloud.

Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.

Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain.

And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

And so reads God's word.

We've been partnering with you guys for a few years now, and what a privilege that's been.

Honestly, it's one of the highlights of ministry for me is that we get to uh be a part of what God is doing uh around the world.

All right, Exodus uh 24, Exodus 24.

I don't know if you got your Bibles open, it'll be helpful, or follow along somewhere, or turn them on, however you do that.

And um we would I would love for you to follow along with me.

Let me let me just start by asking a question.

Uh Duncan sort of alluded to it earlier, but simply asking ourselves the question of why we're here.

What why do you come to church?

What is the point of what we're doing here, both here and around the world, as people gather?

Uh how do you answer that question?

I you know, I think we we all come from bit different backgrounds, and and I think there's a lot of ways that that churches and church leaders answer that question.

Uh some would say, well, what we're doing here is a form of entertainment, right?

And here's what I mean by that.

They would say that that not because we're in a movie theater or anything like that.

It's more a it's more of the issue of um the the entertainment becomes the vehicle in which we we want you to get the gospel, right?

We've got to keep you, we've got to keep your attention, and by keeping your attention, we can make sure that you hear the gospel, and so they there's this sort of conception that the the last thing in the world we want is for people to be bored, and so we've got to entertain you to sort of keep you coming back.

Is that why you're here?

Um others are are gonna say, well, it's not in entertainment, it's more inspiration, right?

And this is just sort of it's it's it's because what we see is the problem is is the problem in the world is that it's lots of discouragement.

We need to be encouraged, we need a pick-me-up, we need something that'll keep us coming back for more.

I mean, there's life is hard, right?

This is the problem.

Life is hard, and so what we need is some sort of inspiration to uh keep us going.

Is that why you're here?

Others would say no, it's really about uh education or teaching, right?

Is that what we want to do?

The the problem with the world is not we need to be entertained or we need to be inspired.

The problem is we need more information.

We need to exchange that information.

This is how we change people.

So I come to church, or maybe the reason is because I want good teaching.

Now, listen, this is a church that loves good teaching.

Is that the primary reason you're here?

Well, we could talk about things like, are you here because there's a religious impulse?

Are you here because there's something that says, you know what, I gotta check this box every week to feel like I'm okay with God?

Or are you here because of friends?

Like, is it is it primarily I'm here because there's this great community around me and and and I'm uh I can be lonely, and because of loneliness, it's good for me to be around friends.

Listen, most of the things I just mentioned are are not bad things.

Maybe entertainment, we'd say no, not that, but but yeah, we do want to be inspired, we do want to be taught, we do want friends.

Uh, but is that really why you're here?

Exodus 24, what it what does this have to do anything with Exodus 24?

Let me let me read to you a quote from Phil Riken.

He says, this Exodus 24 is the story of a worship service, the first one fully described in the Bible.

It contains nearly all of the basic elements of a public service, and thus it sets the pattern for biblical worship.

There was a call to worship, the reading of God's word, confession of faith, a sharing of a sacramental meal, all done under the oversight of Israel's elders and by the servant appointed to lead public worship.

And it was all done in the presence of a holy and glorious God.

This is what worship is meeting with God.

This is what worship is, meeting with God.

Is that why you're here?

Is that what's going on, right?

Is that what got you out of bed this morning?

You looked and said, Today I have this opportunity to have an encounter with God.

I'm not there to be entertained, I could care less about that.

This is not about inspiration.

This isn't about the use of my gifts, which is another way people think of this, right?

That really church is really about me and me being able to exercise my gifts.

Is it any wonder, right?

If if if that's the idea, is it any wonder that that men that stand in this position can be intoxicated by this?

Because wow, you you you you get to hear from me and and I get to use my gifts.

Is that what this is about?

Or is this really just about meeting with God?

That everything that's happening here, right?

That I mean, some of you are here and say, Man, this is what I need more than anything.

What I need more than anything is to meet with God, it's an encounter with God, is to is to be like the woman in Mark 5, who's mean, if I could just touch the hem of his garment, everything for me would change.

And it would.

So I I I want to look at this together.

I want to I want to sort of walk through this passage with you.

And we're gonna spend most of our time, actually all of our time, in verses one through 11, but I wanted you to see the context.

Now let me let me just for your sake give you sort of an overview, and I want you to think of what's happening pictorially or or just in terms of where the positions of people are, right?

In verses one through 11, you have the summons of God.

Hey, come up on the mountain.

So what happens?

Moses and Natab and Abihu and 70 elders come up.

They come up, let's say, about halfway up the mountain.

You got the people at the bottom, and then in verses 12 through 18, God's gonna call Moses, come up by yourself to be with me.

I'm gonna give you the book of the law, I'm gonna give you this stuff from the mountain, right?

And if you think about what's happening, think about the layout of that vertically.

The top of the mountain, you've got Moses, the, if you will, the high priest, the mediator.

In the middle of the mountain, you've got the priestly class.

At the bottom of the mountain, you have the people.

I tell you this because as you walk through the book of Exodus, you're gonna see that essentially they're gonna take what's vertical and they're gonna lay it down horizontally when we get to the tabernacle, and you're going to have the tabernacle.

You have the outer part being the outer court, that's the people's court, that's where the people could gather.

You have the holy place, that's where the priestly class could go, and finally you have the most holy place where only the high priest could go, and that once a year.

And so what's happening on the mountain vertically will come and be settled among the people horizontally.

But I think Riken is right in that what we see here is a worship service.

What we see here is people meeting with God.

And so, what are the elements of a worship service?

And so let's look at that together as Riken points out.

Let's let's first start up and look at the call to worship.

Look at verses one and two.

Then he said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar.

Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.

So what you have is God.

I think Duncan said this beginning, God initiating, God bringing people and saying, Look, it, I'm the one who's initiating this whole worship service.

And he calls the people up to him, right?

This is a call from one in authority.

Now think about this.

Like when a parent calls or an employer calls to you, or a commander calls to those in his, you know, under his supervision.

The response we expect is, you know, he says, come here, she says, come here.

The response we expect is not, well, uh, I will, but I I gotta make sure I'm gonna be entertained, or you need to guarantee that I'll be inspired, or will there be some new information for me, or any of those things.

Like, like, that's not why what we expect to hear when somebody in authority, especially when that somebody is God, is yes, sir, right, I'm coming.

I'll do exactly what you've called me to do.

Do you understand that every Sunday morning is a summons?

A summons for the people of God to gather.

This is an extraordinary opportunity.

This is what's happening all over the world right now.

I God is saying, I want to meet with you.

I'm gonna take the initiative to come and be among you, and I want you to come and meet with me.

This is this is an amazing reality that we're caught up in.

That the God of the universe says, Man, I want to be with you.

In fact, the book of Exodus is essentially the very first place we ever see that there's a God who wants to be known, there's a God who wants to be among his people, and there's a God who takes the initiative for all that to happen.

I'm gonna rescue Israel, I'm gonna bring them to myself, and I'm gonna do all this, I'm gonna make them holy so that I can come and dwell among them.

All of that at God's initiative.

And it's no less true for us in the New Testament church.

Here we are.

And God's saying, I want to come, I want to dwell among you, I want to come and meet with you.

How is this not our highest priority?

How is coming to meet with God not the the number one thing on our list every week when God's saying, I'm I'm I've designed this because I want to meet with you.

That's that's the call to worship.

But let's keep going.

Let's look at the the book of worship.

Look at verses three and four.

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules, and the people answered with one voice that all the words the Lord has spoken will do.

And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.

Now skip down to verse 7, and he says, Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people over and over.

We read about this book, about the words of the Lord.

So, so here we have what we might call a proto-Bible, right?

Ed, that is that is here.

Obviously, they don't have a Bible.

They have the first inklings of a Bible.

They can't hold something in our hands.

Do you understand?

Do you understand how incredibly privileged we are?

That right now, most of you could pull open your phone and you've got all 66 books of the Bible, in any translation you want, any any sort of you know, uh uh language you want, and you can take that anywhere you want.

This is an extraordinary privilege that we have.

Michelle and I, my wife, uh right the year after the actually the year we were married, we left and went to China, and um, and one of the most amazing things, we we taught English over there for a year, and uh, we got to smuggle Bibles at one point, which was awesome.

And I mean, it was this really like we took a suitcase, we filled it, we like put clothes over the top of it, we walked it across the board, and we're like, yes, we made it through, right?

Then we're sort of handing them out quietly to to students as they would come into our place, or handing them to these kind of like, I don't know, like Bible mules.

I don't know what else we'll say.

They would come in with a backpack, they take like 10, and they'd walk away with Bibles and they'd distribute them.

Like, like and and the people were so hungry.

I've never seen one of these.

Here, here's here we we have these 66 books right here at our disposable.

This is an amazing thing that God has given us.

They didn't have that, but they have this first Bible.

What is it?

What what what what what what what does it contain?

Well, it says he Moses goes up, probably.

This is the Ten Commandments, and it's sort of the case law that comes after it.

So Exodus 20 to 23 is probably contained on these.

And and then what does Moses do?

He says he tells it to the people, then he goes back and writes it down, and then he reads what he wrote down.

Why does he do this?

So, in other words, the people have heard what they're supposed to do twice.

Why?

Well, I think there's a couple of reasons.

Number one, I think that um that that they're saying, hey, we'll do this.

And so Moses goes, well, let me make sure I'm gonna put it in writing, and I'm gonna give it back to you because you need to know what you're agreeing to.

This is a covenant, and you need to know the terms of the covenant, right?

I want to make sure you've got it memorialized.

So that's the first reason, I think, just simply because of what um of what they were agreeing to.

But I think the second reason is just simply because, like us, this is how they learn, right?

They learn by repetition, they learn by by being reminded over and over and over again of the truth, right?

Peter's gonna say in 2 Peter, I uh, you know, basically I'm not shy to stir up your mind by way of reminder to very basic truths.

Isn't this the way we learn?

We learn by simply going back over and over and over uh to the to the uh to the lessons of scripture and seeing what uh what they have to say to us.

And so so this is this is what's happening here.

But I want you to notice something that even at this early stage, so I mean this is this is pre-the church age, right?

This is this is the people of God in their infancy, and right here at their infancy, the people of God are guided by the written, uh, fixed, objective, transcultural revelation of the word of God.

It's gonna outlast them, it's gonna outlast us.

This is really important, right?

The the church, we don't come along, the people of God don't come along, no matter what you've been taught, to say that somehow the word of God will bend to us, it'll bend to our cultural moment, we'll we'll we'll make it fit in so it feels nice to us.

We bend to it, we bend to the will of God, and here's the fixed will of God.

And so, so so here they are right here in the beginning, saying, This is what we need to know.

And and look, so so what happens is that Moses gets up and says, okay, here's the word of God, and here's the explanation of God's word.

This is a central part of worship.

Like I said before, like you don't, I hope the the primary reason you come is not teaching in this sense.

What I want is a transfer information.

Of course you come to a church like this because they love their Bibles, right?

That you're gonna, you're gonna you're gonna learn the Bible here.

They're gonna teach that to you.

But ultimately, it's because you're coming at the summons of God.

And and here, this is a central part of worship that we would listen to, respond to the word of God.

We we have not met with God until we've heard his voice, and we don't hear his voice until we've opened scripture.

And so that's what's happening here, right?

Worship is more than learning God's word, but it's never less.

We sing, we do all kinds of things as part of our worship, but it should never be less.

We should be eager to learn from scripture, of course.

All those are good things.

Teaching is one reason we come, but at the bottom, it's because we're responding to the summons of God, whether or not we feel inspired or entertained or we get new information.

We're coming because we recognize God says this is important, even if I don't find it relevant.

That's sort of way down on the chain in terms of what's important.

That's the book of worship.

There's a call to worship, there's the book of worship.

Look at the response of worship.

Look in verses three.

Look at look look at the second part of verse three.

And the people answered, uh, I'm sorry, and Moses came and told all the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules.

Um and and then the verse seven uh all the Lord has spoken, we will do, and we will be obedient.

So here is the response of worship, right?

God's word calls for a response, always.

We we come to God's word, we we come to meet with God, but what happens, right?

But but it's not about the fact that it creates a feeling, it's not simply about inspiration.

It is, it is, it is coming, it's recommitting ourselves to the terms of the covenant.

It's coming again and saying, we will do what the word tells us to do.

We sing, I can promise you, one of the things that the elders here and the leaders of this church do is they think through every word you're singing.

When we came to worship, they're thinking about, man, I don't know if I like that word.

I'm sure there's there's worship songs that the world loves right now that they've decided to pass on or change because they're concerned about teaching you correct things and that you respond in the proper ways.

What are we doing when we sing?

We're responding to what God has done for us in Christ.

Responding to his goodness.

We're renewing our commitment.

We're reminding ourselves that we are the people of God.

That's the response of worship.

This is always necessary for us.

God's word always demands a response, and it demands a response of obedience.

So here's what you see all the way back in Exodus: the response of the people in worship.

But then you see this sort of strange moment here.

I don't know if you noticed it, this sacrifice of worship.

Look at again at verse four.

They say, All the words, uh, and Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.

He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and twelve pillars according to twelve tribes of Israel, and he sent the young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.

And Moses took half the oxen, um, took half of the blood and put it in the basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar.

This is a very odd thing that's happening here.

What what what's going on?

Um, I I call this the sacrifice of worship, not because it's your sacrifice in order to worship, it's a sacrifice that makes worship possible.

See, what does God do?

God, you'll see these covenants all throughout scripture, especially your Old Testament.

And every time there's a covenant made, it's always sealed with blood.

Right?

You understand?

This is the way you ratify a covenant.

And so the the tradition is what?

You would you would take an animal, you'd cut it in half, and the parties would walk through the middle of the of the severed animal.

So it's really, I know it sounds gruesome, but the idea there is that they're saying symbolically.

If I break this covenant, may this happen to me.

In fact, the idea behind covenant, if you read it in Hebrew, is actually cut a covenant.

That's what it means.

So you cut this animal, you walk through and says, may this happen to me if I don't fulfill the covenant.

Genesis 16, maybe some of you remember the story there.

Abraham falls into a trance or has this vision, he's in a dream, and he he sees these animals cut in half just like this, and there's a smoking pot, and the pot sort of goes through the animal carcasses.

This is the presence of God.

And it's this extraordinary moment because this is God saying, May this happen to me if I break the covenant.

Like Abraham, I'm going to keep this covenant.

So here in Exodus, there's this 24, you've got these two parts.

You've got, number one, you've got Moses building the altar and then erecting the 12 stones.

They represent the 12 tribes of Israel.

And then you've got him offering the sacrifice.

And he takes the sacrifices and he puts one half of the blood on the altar, the other half on the people.

Now, this is like like this is where, like, what is he doing?

Well, the altar, I want you to think of the altar of God as a stand-in for God's presence, and the pillars that are surrounding it as a stand-in for God's people.

Here's God once again saying, I want to be with my people.

I want to come and dwell among that.

That comes at the price of a sacrifice.

This is how this is going to happen.

There had to be the payment of blood.

This is how God was propitiated.

Okay, you're going to see this word in the scripture.

If you don't know that word, that's a term you need to have in your theological arsenal, right?

You just need to know words like propitiation.

Some of you know this.

Okay, like we learn new words all the time.

I know you guys are a coffee culture.

I didn't know what a flat white was until I came to uh uh to Ireland about four years ago.

I'm like, I've never heard of this drink, right?

But I learned it, right?

I I learned what a cortado is.

I'm not a look, just so we're all clear, I like black coffee that's brewed in a place at home, and then I pour it over and over and just put cream in it.

That's my coffee.

I know that's offensive to you.

Uh so so there's a lot of terminology in coffee culture I don't understand, but it's helpful to understand.

Well, listen, there's a lot of terminology in theology.

Maybe you understand.

Here's one you should understand propitiation.

That is, how does God become pro-us?

How do we get to this place?

How does God, who has the right to be against us, become for us?

That's the idea behind propitiation, right?

It it did he do it if we say, well, how do how does that work?

How did God become pro-us?

Is it because we're awesome?

We're just great people, and that's why.

No.

No, no, it's because there was a sacrifice for our sins.

Um how can sinful people be in the presence of a holy God?

You understand?

That is the question in all of Scripture.

This is what the writers of Scripture wrestled with.

Now it's not what we wrestle with.

We ask all kinds of questions that never get to this question.

Right?

And so we come up with wrong answers.

Steve Jobs famously said, the people don't know what they want until I tell them.

I think God would say the people don't know the right questions to ask until I tell them.

And this is what scripture is telling us.

This is this is the question.

How does a holy God dwell with sinful people?

We ask things like, um, why can't God just forgive sin?

Why can't God just make my life happier?

Why can't He just give me the material wealth that I long for and health and all those sorts of things?

God is uh asking us to answer things like, How can uh sinful people dwell with the holy God?

That's exactly what's happening.

And what's the answer?

The blood of a sacrifice.

He can't just forgive.

You know, the people philosophers love to make stupid statements like, um, can God make a stone that he cannot move?

The answer is no, he can't.

He can't do anything that's outside of his character.

Is there anything God can't do?

Yes.

He can't just forgive sin.

There has to be a sacrifice.

And so here's right at the beginning, saying this is the sacrifice that's going to allow my holiness to be in the presence of sinfulness.

But now, because a sacrifice has been made, now you can come into my presence.

The writer of Hebrews is going to say, because Jesus, our great high priest, has already gone before us now, right?

He's made the sacrifice, now we can come boldly before the throne of grace in the time of need.

So so this is what's happening.

One half the blood he sprinkles on the altar.

This is how the people in God meet up.

The other half he sprinkles on the people.

Now think about that.

Can you imagine?

Like, like somebody here takes blood and sprinkles it on you.

What would that do?

It would gross you out, right?

First, second, it would, it would be like, wait, this is never going to come out.

Right?

Like, I, you know, unless you have those tide sticks or whatever, right?

They didn't have that.

So this is like, this is not this, that's the whole idea.

The whole idea is they are marked, they are stained, right, by the mark of the covenant.

It is now upon them, right?

So by the way, this already sort of alludes to when we get to the New Testament, it alludes to what we as a church, isn't it amazing?

Have you ever thought about the graphic songs we sing?

What can wash away my sin?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh, the blood of Jesus, it washes white as snow.

There's a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's vein, and sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.

Like how graphic.

But how true.

That's exactly that's exactly the sacrifice that we need.

This is how we come into the presence of a holy God.

Celebrate the Lord's Supper.

What are we doing?

Remembering men, this is the sacrifice of worship.

How in the world can we even be here?

How can we expect God to draw near to us, who most of us sinned even this morning?

Because there's a sacrifice.

And there's a blood that takes away that that allows us to be in the presence of God by faith.

That's a sacrifice of worship.

But then look next thing.

Look at the meal of worship.

Look at verses 10 and 11 with me.

Well, back up to verse 9.

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 elders of Israel went up and they saw the God of Israel.

There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.

And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel.

They beheld God and ate and drank.

Here there's the meal of worship.

And this may be one of the most remarkable passages in Exodus.

They ate, they had a meal with God.

And notice, you notice it says it says, he didn't lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel.

The idea is not, you know, laying his hand like, oh, they're my son.

That's the hand of like, I'm not going to slay you.

You're in my presence, and I won't kill you for that.

So here they are eating.

And by the way, if there's ever a moment of frustration with scripture, maybe it comes here because, like, you're thinking, Moses, you could have given us a lot more detail.

Right?

What did you eat?

Like, what did that look like?

What was the room like?

Tell us about the table.

I want to know.

Give us more detail than you just ate, and all you can say is, as it were.

Right?

I want to know more about that.

But here's what we can know.

Why a meal?

Why a meal?

The covenant has been made, and now they celebrate with a meal.

Isn't that the way that we celebrate covenants?

You go to a wedding.

What usually comes after the wedding?

The reception.

Usually it's a meal.

Sometimes it's this extravagant meal.

Sometimes it's, you know, mint and cake and punch, right?

Whatever it is, somehow you're celebrating, you're coming together and saying, saying this is sort of the celebration of what's been done.

Here they're saying we fellowship with God.

We did that.

We celebrated this meal.

A meal is a place of intimacy.

A meal is a place of fellowship, right?

Very few of us pull in strangers off the street to eat with us at our dinner table.

What are we saying when we invite somebody over to sit down and have a meal?

We're saying, man, I want a fellowship with you.

Even today in our cultures, this is the way it works.

We're saying something about the kind of relationship we want to have.

Here's God.

God taking initiative, God setting the table, God preparing the meal, God doing all of this, saying, I want to have fellowship with you.

And you notice this twice, it says they saw God, they beheld him, they ate and drank with him.

They were in God's presence.

Now, what was that like?

What would Moses or these elders can you imagine coming down off the mountain and saying, What did you see?

What went on?

What was in that room?

And now they're gonna try to describe for you the indescribable.

You saw God?

Like, tell me what you saw.

And all they can say, look at verse 10.

All they can say is is that as it were, under his feet, right, this is what it looked like.

There was a sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.

I imagine all they could say to you is, look, look, I don't know how to describe what I saw.

The best I can tell you, I can tell you that the only place our eyes could go, they could never get higher than his feet.

I was we were so overwhelmed by the presence and the power and the authority and the omniscience and all the things we can say about God is that I couldn't even lift my eyes.

In fact, we're gonna find out later in Exodus.

Moses is gonna say, in this moment of rapture, like I've been with God, and now God show me your glory.

I want to actually see you.

And says, Moses, you can't.

If I uncork my glory, if you see me for everything that I am, it'll kill you.

So in Exodus 34, it says that God says he's gonna put his hand over Moses, walk past him.

And when Moses says, When I pass by, then I'll lift my hand.

And the word there, some scholars think it means something like afterburn.

Like God's glory, the effulgence of his glory is like the afterburn, right?

You can't see any part of him.

And here they are saying, All we got to see is his feet.

And then they they make the point.

Moses makes the point of it says he did not lay his hand on them.

Even to see the feet of God is enough to slay you.

But it doesn't happen.

So this this is this is what an encounter with God looks like.

Fellowship, celebration, but awe and wonder.

God is not our buddy.

We fellowship with God on His terms.

It's always accompanied by a sense of awe and worship.

A friend of mine sent me a text and he said, I I went up on a mountain.

This just happened a couple days ago.

There's a mountain near our home.

It's called Mount Baldi because there's no vegetation up on the top of it.

Um and he hiked up to the top of it and he said the wind was just ferocious.

He said it actually knocked him off his feet.

And he said, and I kept thinking about Exodus.

Like this is me experiencing natural phenomenon.

Imagine God coming down and thunder and lightning and clouds and fire.

Right.

This is a this is an awesome experience.

And we were meant to experience some semblance of that, right?

When every Sunday we we can we say, ascend or God descends, God meets us on the mountain, and we come into his presence by his gracious invitation through the blood of his son for worship.

But but let me give you one more thing.

And that's the reason for worship.

See, see, as I said at the beginning, God summons us.

If God didn't summon us, then we would have no ability, right?

We couldn't come.

But but here we are, and here we are, and God is saying in Exodus, I want to be the God who is known by his people.

Alan Ross is a commentator, and he wrote this about this passage.

He says, God does not change himself to come to us, but he does intend to change us so that we can live in the midst of the fire as Moses did.

In fact, that is the direction of the entire book of Exodus.

While the goal of the people might be the promised land, God's goal is that he may dwell in their midst, in effect, bringing the mountain of God into the center of camp.

I love that.

Um when when you when you leave Exodus and you walk through your Old Testament, you finally get to the New Testament, of course, and you wonder how all of this fits together, right?

How does old and new fit together?

Why, why all these sacrifices and you know, tabernacles and priests and rituals and all this stuff?

And then you come to the book of Hebrews, and the book of Hebrews explains so much of this.

The book of Hebrews helps us, right?

It's filled with covenants and priests and blood and sacrifices and all these things and begins to tell us here's how they make sense in light of what's happened in the New Testament.

And the writer looks back and he looks, says, Look, we we have essentially something better.

We have a better priest, and we have a better substitute, and we have a better sacrifice, we have a better tabernacle.

All that has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

And he gets to Hebrews chapter 10, and maybe some of you will remember this passage.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

In verse 19, he says, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through the floor through his flesh.

And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean.

That's Exodus 24, from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful, right?

This is what's happening when God's people come together.

When we come together, this is what's happening as people gather when Foothill Church gathers in a few hours in Southern California.

This is what's going to be happening.

It's what's happening here.

We remember, we rehearse the gospel, we hold fast to this confession that we say that we all believe.

We draw near, and all because Christ, our high priest, calls us and cleanses us.

We hold fast to that.

And when we understand this, right, it gives sort of new urgency to the next part of Hebrews chapter 10.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Maybe you remember this.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.

And all the more as you see the day drawing near.

See, this is God saying, Man, I'm gonna draw near, I'm gonna come and be with you.

Why would you neglect that?

Why would this again, why would we stay home or sleep in or not come to be with the people of God?

Now you're all here, praise God.

Right?

I know I'm preaching to the choir here.

Stay there.

Make this a habit.

Never give up on this.

See, each week, each week, at God's summons, God, we climb the mountain, or maybe better again, God comes down to us.

And we get to come into his presence, feast on the word, worship him in listening to the preached word and singing and responding to him, going out and saying, God, I want to go out of here because of who you are, and I want to be obedient to you, I want to live amongst a culture and be obedient to your word.

No wonder the psalmist in Psalm 95 writes, O come, let us worship and bow down.

Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.

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