We're in Exodus chapter 24 and
we're reading from verse 12. And the Lord said unto Moses,
come up to me into the mount and be there and I will give
thee tables of stone and a law and commandments which I have
written that thou mayest teach them. And Moses rose up, and
his minister Joshua, and Moses went up into the mount of God.
And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us until we
come again unto you. And behold, Aaron and her are
with you. If any man have any matters to
do, let him come unto them. And Moses went up into the mount,
and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode
upon the mount Sinai. And the cloud covered it six
days. And the seventh day he called
unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the
glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount
in the eyes of the children of Israel. And Moses went into the
midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount. And Moses
was in the mount forty days and forty nights. Amen. May God bless this reading to
us. I might also have opened with
the first couple of verses from this passage because that speaks
about 70 elders also going on to the mountain with Moses. and we're going to come to think
about those elders and the fact that we're told they saw God
together with Moses. But here's what is in my mind
today with respect to this little passage. The children of Israel
had been liberated from captivity. They had been brought out of
Egypt They had been delivered from the armies of their enemies. They had been led through the
Red Sea and provided in the desert with food and water as they journeyed
with Moses toward the promised land. God met with them. here in the wilderness and he
personally spoke the 10 commandments to them and supplied Moses with
many additional laws and practices for the good of the people, for
the rule of justice and for the success of the nation, especially
when they entered into the promised land. And all of these things
that God did for the children of Israel, that he did for the
people, were gracious and merciful and kind. God had no obligation
to the people except that he had promised to do them good
for the sake of their fathers, for Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,
and it was these covenant promises that brought the goodness of
God upon these people. The Lord, as it were, reached
out to them in kindness and in his goodness. And it appears
in this chapter, this chapter 24, that the Lord was continuing
to be good to the people because he appears to be reinforcing
and maintaining the connection that he had with the people. God in this chapter calls an
audience with Moses and Aaron, but it's not only Moses this
time and his brother Aaron. There is also two sons of Aaron
and they are called as well, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 senior
members or they're called elders of the people. Now we're not
exactly told why this meeting was called but it seems that
the purpose was that God might confirm to the elders as the
representatives of all the people that the words that were being
given to Moses came from God himself and that they were to
be obeyed. It is as if there were an unfolding
of revelation, a continuing pattern of the Lord revealing himself
to his people, giving a little bit more and a little bit more
as the time progressed. and it was an act of kindness. And we see that these people,
this band of men, Moses Aaron, the two sons of Aaron and these
70 elders, they went up into the mountain in order to have
an audience with God. And we see if we just go back
a couple of verses to verse 9, we're told there, Then went up
Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
Israel, and listen to this, 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. And this is telling us, well,
let's look at verse 11 as well. So here we see that these elders,
they saw God and that no hand was laid on them. and that they did eat and drink.
That's telling us simply that they were not hurt by this view
of God that they had. They lived through the experience
of seeing God without being harmed. They were still able to eat and
drink. They had their life. And again,
this is an act of God's kindness. This meeting with the elders
was not a vision or a dream, but a real physical encounter,
such as had been given in the past to Abraham and to Jacob. In fact, Moses tells us in this
passage that the name of the Lord that they saw was the God
of Israel or the God of Jacob. And God appeared to these elders,
it seems, in the form of a man. This was the Lord Jesus Christ. This was the eternal word who
appeared in human flesh at the incarnation and was seen at different
times in Israel's history by different people. We call these
visions or these meetings, these manifestations of God to his
people in the Old Testament, theophanies or appearances of
God. And we should just note that
what we have here and in the other occasions and occurrences
of these theophanies is not a contradiction of what is said in the New Testament
about no man having seen God. In fact, what it is, is a confirmation. That's in John 1, verse 18, and
this is what John says, the only begotten Son, which
is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. So in fact,
what John is telling us here is that this meeting, this encounter
by these elders, and Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu, was
a meeting of the only begotten Son and these people. These revelations were pre-incarnation. revelations with the Lord Jesus
Christ. He had first met with Moses and
now he meets to a larger group of these senior and influential
leaders. And the reference that was there
as well to the sapphire pavement is a picture of the glory of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Because when these elders saw
Christ, It was as though he was standing on earth and yet standing
above the sky because the very ground in which he stood was
a sky blue colour of the gemstone sapphire under his feet. So although he was here on earth,
it looked as if he was above the sky as well. Now there might
be elements in there about the divinity and the humanity of
the Lord Jesus Christ, but I don't want to dwell on that at this
time. Simply to say, what a privilege
that these men obtained, being able to see God and what a mercy
that God was so willing to deal with fallen sinful creatures
in this way. After this meeting with the elders,
Moses was personally called to go up nearer to God. And we're told that Joshua, his
servant, who would later become Moses' successor, also was permitted
to approach closer to God. The reason for that was that
Moses was to receive a written record of the Ten Commandments
on tables of stone, which God had himself written. And Moses
ascended up into the mountain, which we're told was filled with
fire and with cloud. And there he remained in the
presence of God for 40 days and 40 nights. Now, the next seven
chapters in the book of Exodus from 25 through to 31 contain
detailed instructions from God to Moses concerning his ongoing
presence with his people. and his will or his instructions
that there should be a construction made of a tent or a tabernacle
which would be at the centre of the Israelite camp and which
would be the centre of worship and approach to God by the nation
Israel. And we're going to return to
the tabernacle and the wilderness worship of God on another occasion. But I want to move on right now
a few chapters to the end of that passage and come to chapter
32. So if you just turn with me to
chapter 32 and I want to read the first few verses of that
chapter to you. So we're in Exodus chapter 32
and you remember the last thing I said there was that Moses stayed
in the mountain with God for 40 days and 40 nights. All the
other chapters have to do with the instructions and here's where
the story begins again. We read in chapter 32 verse 1,
And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out
of the mount, The people gathered themselves
together unto Aaron and said unto him, Make us gods which
shall go before us, for as for this Moses, the man that brought
us up out of the land of Egypt, we want not, or we know not,
what is become of him. And Aaron said unto them, break
off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives,
of your sons and of your daughters and bring them unto me. And all
the people break off the golden earrings which were in their
ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received them at their
hand and fashioned it with a graving tool after he had made it a molten
calf. And they said, These be thy gods,
O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron
made proclamation and said, Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord. and they
rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings,
and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat
and to drink, and rose up to play. Now, I hope you realise
immediately how wrong, how awful this was. Everything about this
is wrong. After all God had done, right
up to revealing himself to the 70 elders, after only 40 days, the people
had had enough of waiting for Moses, and by implication, waiting
for God. Can you believe that? Basically,
they said, we've had enough of waiting for God. Maybe they thought
that Moses was dead in the mountain because of the fire and because
of the darkness. But actually, there's a carelessness
to their comments about him. There's a repudiation of Moses
in the tone of the words that they use. and there's a desire
for their own handmade gods to go before them. That is a terrible
indictment of their heart and their attitude. Despite God's
goodness, they showed themselves to be a wicked people. Within
only a few days, a few weeks, they had rebelliously broken
the very first commandment that God had given them at the very
first opportunity. So here are a couple of lessons
that I want to leave with you about this. The first is this. God is good. Our God had supplied
every need to these people. for the sake of his covenant
promises. He was faithful. He was patient
and long-suffering. He was open-handed with many
blessings. He graciously offered privileges
and prosperity to Israel for their obedience and for their
worship. And yet, for all of God's goodness,
the people were rebellious and wicked. Like Adam and Eve before
them in the garden, they disobeyed the word of God at the very first
opportunity and did so in a most grievous way. The sin that these
people committed is aggravated, I believe, by the fact that their
elders, as we've just learned, had seen God with their own eyes. They had seen him in the form
of a man. They had seen that pavement underneath
his feet. And yet, they made their god
to look like a calf. Actually, they called that golden
calf their gods. I don't know whether you noticed
that. That was drawn to my attention by Robert Hawker. He made a very
interesting point. He said that they called that
golden calf gods in the plural. And Hawker suggests that this
is an aggravation of their crime because they likened this golden
calf to the plurality of the godhead. And we might try to
explain their actions, that the calf was a symbol of sacrifice,
but in fact every excuse just deepens the hole of the guilt
into which these rebels had fallen. Even and perhaps especially Aaron,
who had seen so much and had become so culpable. Now we're
going to wait to see what God is going to do to these wicked
people on another occasion. But let us take note of the true
nature of the heart of men and women by this incident. Sin always rises in our hearts
and it always shows itself in our actions. Sin is opposition
to God's law and to God's holiness and none of us can ever truly
serve God properly because at heart we are a sinful people
who do evil things. We want our own way and we think
we are better than we really are. The gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ is the only way to peace with God, and it is the only
way of salvation. God could appear to people personally. God could give them his rules
and his laws personally. God could provide all goodness,
all blessings, every deliverance, every need, and still the heart
of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. The gospel alone of Jesus
Christ is the way of salvation because it tells of forgiveness
for sin and it tells of a righteousness that is not based on our own
obedience and our own good, which would never be enough anyway,
but on the obedience of another, the obedience of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Israel tried to mix law and religion
and mystical ideas with the true worship of God and it produced
such an abomination against the true and living God that we can
but wonder God did not simply destroy them there and then. But the scriptures show us these
incidents to teach us about God and to teach us about ourselves. Let us not think ourselves better
than we are, but let us seek the mercy of God and approach
God only on the grounds of Christ's blood and righteousness, which
he has revealed to us in the gospel. This gospel is the way
of God's grace. This is the only way of salvation. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today. Amen.