If you'll turn in your Bibles this morning, we're going to be looking at Exodus chapter 24. Exodus chapter 24. I won't read the whole chapter. Yes, I will read the whole chapter. But I won't preach the whole chapter. Probably. Exodus chapter 24, God's holy, inerrant, infallible, inspired, and unchanging word. Then he said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, 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 put it in basins and half of the blood he threw against the altar. 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 he 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 and Nadab and Abihu and 70 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 hand on the chief men 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. Behold, Aaron and Hur with you, Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them. Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain, and the glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day, he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on 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 40 days and 40 nights. Thus far the reading of God's word. May he write this word on our hearts. And may he grant us faith to believe all that it holds for us. Congregation of the Lord Jesus, if you look in your English Bible, a little more than halfway through, you'll see a page typically, right? before Matthew, and it's usually a blank page, and it has just maybe three words. It does in my Bible. It says, the New Testament, which implies that everything that went before it is the Old Testament. Let's see, in the beginning of the Bible, yes, before you get to Genesis, there's a page that says the Old Testament. Well, you know, those pages are not Scripture. It's in your Bible, but those pages are not Scripture. You realize there are pages and things in your Bible, there are references and notes, right, that are put there by editors to try to clarify things. You know, the verse numbers are not from the Lord. Those were created in the 16th century to help us find things. And the chapter divisions. So those are all added to help us see things more clearly. That page, Old Testament. That page, New Testament. There's truth in that, but it's a little misleading. It's surely true that what happens from the beginning of Matthew and forward is in some ways part of the New Testament. And certainly the New, and better, we should translate it Old Covenant and New Covenant. That's the word that's being translated. and the only reason it says testament is because of Hebrews 9.15, and we'll come back to that later on this morning, which is probably not the best way of understanding it. If they're going to say that, it should say Old Covenant and New Covenant, because Scripture doesn't know very much about testaments, but it knows a lot about covenants. The Hebrew word for covenant occurs 227 times in the Hebrew Bible, and the Greek word for covenant occurs over 20 times, Something like 27 times, I think, but don't hold me to that in the New Testament. Somebody will take out his phone and start doing a search. You were wrong. I'm just trying to give you a sense of what's going on. But not everything, according to Scripture, not everything that happened before the incarnation of our Lord, strictly speaking, now strictly speaking, narrowly speaking, belongs to the Old Covenant. And so that designation is a little misleading. If you want to know from a biblical point of view what the Old Covenant is, according to 2 Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10, and from Galatians 3, what the Old Covenant is in strict terms, it's right here in Exodus chapter 24. You're looking at the making of the Old Covenant. And so it's pretty important that we understand that because we talk about the Old Covenant all the time, but we don't always understand what it is. In other words, Noah, from the point of view of Paul and Galatians and the 2 Corinthians and the writer to the Hebrews, Noah is not an Old Covenant figure. Abraham is not an Old Covenant figure. They belong to the time of types and shadows, but not Old Covenant. How do I know that? Because our Lord says that they had the same faith that we do. In fact, Moses had the same faith that we do, according to the writer to the Hebrews. But Moses is not used as the paradigm for the new covenant Christian. Abraham is. Abraham is. When Paul wants to illustrate what faith looks like, what true faith looks like, and how it functions, where does he go? He goes to Abraham. Well, Abraham was before Jesus. And some people say, well, then it's part of the Old Covenant, and that's not for us. Well, that's important then, isn't it, that we understand what the Old Covenant is? Because Paul says, absolutely, Abraham is for us. Do you know that the main reason that some of our friends in the faith don't baptize their covenant children is because they don't know the difference between the Old Covenant and the New, and they don't know the difference between Abraham and Moses, and they think that everything that happened before Jesus is part of the Old Covenant, and they say, well, that was then, this is now, and everything's changed. So it's huge. In a sense, if we get this distinction between Old Covenant and New Covenant, we'll have a clearer understanding of why it is that, for example, we baptize our covenant children. Not out of sentiment, not because it's a nice ceremony and it's a good opportunity to get together with a family and dedicate our children to the Lord, but because they are, we are covenant people and they are covenant children. And the covenant of grace is still the covenant of grace that God made with Abraham. And that Moses didn't change that. Well, let me try to explain all that this morning a little bit from Exodus chapter 24. We'll get it. It'll become a little clearer. And I couldn't come up with a nice alliterative title or even alliterative points this morning. Well, maybe the, no, the points don't even alliterate. But at least the title is short and simple. The title is The Old Covenant. You probably won't forget that. And the first thing that the Lord wants us to see about the Old Covenant this morning is that it's legal. The first thing the Lord wants us to see about the Old Covenant made in Exodus chapter 24 is that it's legal. 1,500 years or so before Jesus, God came to his national people whom he had delivered out of Egypt through the Red Sea on dry ground, by the way. I always hasten to mention that to my Baptist friends, whom I love and whom I teach and with whom I work. So this isn't personal. But how did God's people go through the Red Sea? Time and again, the Psalms say, on dry ground. Who got immersed? Pharaoh and his hosts. Pharaoh and his armies, right? Ask Noah and his family. Noah and his family got sprinkled. Who got immersed? Everybody but Noah. So, if you want to immerse and identify with everybody but Noah, or if you want to immerse and identify with Pharaoh and his hosts, I guess that's okay, but as for me and my family, we will identify with God's people whom he delivered through the Red Sea on dry ground and who got sprinkled by that water as they went through on dry ground. So they brought them through on dry ground. God saved his people powerfully, magnificently, and now he enters into a covenant with them. And you see a really remarkable series of events here in Exodus 24. The Lord calls Moses up the mountain, and Aaron, and Nadab, and Abihu, and 70 of the elders. And you see a little bit about the nature of the Old Covenant here in verse 1. Look at that last clause at the end of verse 1. And worship from afar. That says a lot about the nature of the Old Covenant. What is it that God said to his people when they were camped around at the base of Mount Sinai? What was it that he said to them, fundamentally? Stay away, because I am dangerous. And if even an animal, you forget to fall asleep and an animal wanders over and touches the mountain, you have to stone it. Yeah, but that's expensive. God says, I don't care. I want you to understand. I am holy. And children, holy means that God is different from us morally in a way that's almost hard for us. In fact, it's impossible for us to understand. But part of the idea is clean. part of the idea is clean. And we are unclean by nature. We are defiled. We are polluted. God is not. And God is strict about these things. Sometimes we think that God is like a nice grandpa who when we go to visit, he gives us a bar, you know, a chocolate bar. The only thing I really remember about one of my great uncles is he gave me a chocolate bar. And that was nice. God is not like my great uncle who gave me a chocolate bar. He's, relative to his holiness, he's a little bit more like my somewhat grumpier grandfather who scared me, who I didn't understand, and from whom I kept my distance. At least in the Old Covenant, that's how we're meant to think of God. He says, stay away, because I'm dangerous. And if you provoke me, he says, I can break out, is what the Hebrew text says. I can break out against you. And when he does that in the history of Israel, it's bad, isn't it? People die. Stay away. Why? Because it's a legal covenant. Moses came up and he told the people all the words of Yahweh, It's the name of God that's used there, the covenant name. And all the decrees, it says rules here, but we think of, when we say rules, we think of going into the swimming pool. It says, you may not do this, you may not do that, and then we just sort of ignore it and we do what we want and if we don't get caught, it's no big deal. But that's not what this means. This means break these things and die. It's like, so it says no cutoffs in the swimming pool. I bet you've done this. You go in, there's a reason why, by the way, there's no cutoffs. I used to be a lifeguard. The strings come off your clothing and goes into the filter and then they have to shut down the pool and throw everybody out. So that's why there's that rule, in case you ever wondered. So you go in with your cutoffs and you get away with it and nothing happens. But God says, you break my rules, it's like the lifeguard throws a switch and he sees you with your cutoffs and he throws a switch and you die. It would be that strict. That's what God means, children, when he says, don't break my rules. And all the people, and look at this now, and all the people answered with one voice. Yeah, we can do this. Easy peasy. No problem. Now, we don't know exactly what these rules were, but we know what's in the first five books of the Old Testament in the Torah. And we know there are 613 commandments. And we know from the history of Israel that, in fact, they were not able to keep these commandments. But they all said, we can do it. All the words that Yahweh, the covenant Lord, who delivered us out of Egypt, who destroyed Egypt with ten plagues, who brought Pharaoh, the most powerful ruler of the world that then was, brought Pharaoh to his knees and made him beg. Yeah, we can keep those rules. No problem. And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. And you see a little bit of a reflection of the legal character of the Old Covenant again in verse 7 when it says he took the book of the covenant and he read it in the hearing of the people. And again they said, all that Yahweh has spoken, we will do. Not try, not intend, not plan, but do. You know the difference between intend and do. Well, I intended to make that meeting, but one thing led to another, and my phone just wouldn't quit, and there was a crisis at home, and the car wouldn't start, and I just couldn't make it. That was intent. You intended to go. You meant to go. You planned to go. You wanted to go, but you just didn't get it done. When I was 14 children, I started working when I was 14 because I wanted money, and my parents wouldn't give me any money. So I got a job. And I had a job washing dishes from about 4 p.m. until 11 or 12 or 1 or whenever he let me go. And one morning, it was a Friday night, I worked, and I went home about 1, and I was supposed to be back at 10 or 11, I don't know. But I overslept. And I called him up and I said, Mr. Dean, I overslept. And I knew I was in trouble. And I said, do I still have a job? And he said, no. And I said, well, thank you. Actually, I was kind of relieved. Washing dishes is hard. It was hot. It was dirty. And he was scary. But that's a covenant of works. Do this and live. The day you eat thereof, you shall surely die. The day you fail to show up, the moment you fail to show up for work, you're fired. And that's just losing a job. These people said in verse 7, they were going to not plan, not try, not intend, but do. And we will be obedient. This is a legal covenant. This is a reflection of the covenant that God made with us in the beginning when he said, don't eat from, you can eat from all the trees in the garden except for one. And the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die. God didn't say, I intend to punish you, but I may not. He said, you shall surely die. We've lost that sense that there are immediate and fatal consequences to disobeying God. Not that something might happen. Not that you'll get a second chance. Not that you can take an extension or take the test over. There were no participation ribbons in the garden. It was life and death. And Adam chose death. And now Israel, making a very similar sort of covenant before the Lord, is taking on a sacred obligation before the same God who cut us off from the garden and he put an angel with a flashing sword to keep us from ever going back in, to testify to us that we have been alienated from God. The Old Covenant is a legal covenant. It's about doing. It's a covenant that keeps us at a distance. And it's a covenant that was written, according to verses 12 and following, on tablets of stone. That's the nature of the Old Covenant. It's a legal covenant. Secondly, if you look at the second part of verse 4 and following, it's a bloody covenant. Look at the second part of verse 4, just before verse 5. They built an altar, Moses did, early in the morning, and they built 12 pillars, one pillar for each of the 12 tribes. So it's an altar with representations of all the tribes. And he sent some young men out, and they made burnt offerings, And they sacrificed peace offerings. And what did they do, children? They killed oxen. Think of oxen as sort of oversized cattle. And again, they killed those cattle, which means someone took something sharp. And this is a little graphic, but you need to understand that. You need to have this picture in your mind. And they slit the throat of these animals so that they bled out and they died. And then look at Moses, and then it gets even gross, even more gross, if you will, more explicit. This is like watching CSI. And Moses took half the blood, and he put it in basins. And don't do this, you'll get arrested. This is against the law, probably. I'm sure you can't do this. And half the blood he threw against the altar. So he made an altar to represent the people and he baptized that altar representing the people and then he took the book of the covenant and he read it in the hearing of the people and they said, all that the Lord has said, we will do, we will obey. And then look at verse eight. And Moses took the blood and he threw it on the people and he said, behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. I misspoke earlier. I said the altars, yes, represented the people, but what's an altar for? It's for making sacrifices. And then the other, right? There's two parties to every covenant, right? And we know that the one party is the people, certainly because they're being baptized in this blood. How would it be if I took a bowl of blood and I threw it at you? I wouldn't get all of you. The first three or four rows of you would get it. How horrible would that be? Well, that's how covenants were made. Now, this isn't exactly, there are some differences here, but in general terms, the way agreements were made in the ancient world, you've heard this probably many times in this pulpit, so I won't be tedious about it, but agreements were made by the killing of animals, and people walked between the animals, and they say, particularly the lesser king, and would say, may it be to me as it is to these animals if I break this covenant. And we do this all the time. We don't do it with blood. You moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas, you've signed mortgages, and you have said to the bank, may it be to me as it is to these animals, in effect, if I do not make the mortgage, what's the punishment? They come and take your house. A sheriff comes with a gun on his hip, And he says, you have to get out. You didn't make the payment. The bank owns this house. You haven't met the terms of the covenant. You failed. You have to get out. That's an ugly covenant reality that millions of Americans have experienced over the last five, six, seven years. We make these kinds of covenants all the time. We stand in front of the minister in church and we exchange vows, Not promises of intent. Well, I hope if everything goes well, I'll be faithful to you, you'll be faithful to me. We say no, till death do us part. We take sacred vows for which there are sanctions, for which there are punishments when we break the vow. And in California, you break the vow, you lose half of everything that you own. That's a serious sanction. And you lose your family. And life gets very complicated, and often very sad and very angry. Well, this covenant is a bloody covenant. There's the shedding of blood to seal an oath that's been taken. We will do, to seal a covenant that's been made. We will obey. The people are baptized and the altar is baptized. But what does the altar represent? Well, the 12 pillars, of course, represent the tribes. But for whom does the altar stand? It stands for the Lord. And we'll see that. In fact, let's see that now. I can show you a little bit about that from Hebrews 9, verses 15 and following. And I'm going to read an unusual translation. You're not going to see it in yours because this is a literal word-for-word translation of a difficult passage to translate. And most of the English translations sort of flatten it out a little bit. and I'm not going to flatten it out. I'm going to read it the way it actually says word for word in the Greek, so it's going to sound a little funny. And because of this, right, this new covenant, it says in Hebrews 9.15, he is a mediator. And because of this, he is a mediator of the new covenant. In order that death having come for redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, those whom he called may receive the promise of the age of eternity, that is, inheritance. For, in verse 16, where there is a covenant, the death of the covenant victim, is probably the best way to translate that, is necessary. Where there is a covenant, the death of a covenant victim is necessary. Verse 17 makes it even more explicit. For a covenant made over dead victims is steadfast because a covenant doesn't exist. It has no force when the victims are still alive. Well, what victims? Well, in Exodus 24, it's the oxen. In Exodus 24, it's the oxen who are the victims in this covenant-making ceremony. And he goes on to say, From this, not apart from blood, was the first covenant initiated. This is the Mosaic covenant he's talking about. For every command having been spoken, in verse 19 it says, according to the law, having been spoken by Moses to all the people, having taken the blood of calves and goats with water, scarlet wool, and so forth, He took the book itself and did sprinkle all of the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God enjoined on you. What does all this mean? It means that covenants in the biblical world were made by the shedding of blood and by the killing of victims. And it was said, if we do not do this, may we die. May we die the way these oxen die. Covenants are cut. That's what this says in Exodus 24, verse 8. Behold the blood of the covenant that Yahweh cut with you on these words. What it means is that if you are outside of the satisfaction that Jesus made, you are still under this sort of a legal covenant before God. Because there are only two ways of relating to God. There is law and there is grace. And those are two different things. Law says do this and live. If you are trying to present yourself to God this morning on the basis of your best efforts, God is saying, do better. No, do perfectly. If you're trying to present yourself to God, if you say to yourself, well, I'm sure God will accept me because I think the good I've done outweighs the bad. If you're saying that to yourself or if you know someone who's saying that to himself or herself, and you surely do, because virtually everyone outside these walls this morning and perhaps some inside these walls are thinking that and saying that. If you don't believe me, ask anyone anywhere. If you died today and found yourself standing before God, why should he let you into heaven? And I guarantee you, more times than not, people will tell you because I think the good I've done outweighs the bad. But God says, I'm sorry. The first bad act you did disqualified you and you were disqualified in Adam. And every bad act you did thereafter, every sin you committed thereafter, only added to your punishment. There are only two ways of relating to God, by works or by grace. And if you're going to relate to God on the basis of works, I'd like to say, get going, but it's too late. You're already toast. The repo man is coming. And you're just deluding yourself. But there's one last thing that God wants us to see from Exodus 24 about the Old Covenant. It's legal, it's bloody, but it's also gracious. And you see that in verses 9 through 11. After all this bloodshed, after all this oath-taking, then Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and seven of the elders of Israel went up. And look at this now. And they saw the God of Israel. That's grace. Because none of those people were qualified to see the God of Israel. I guarantee you, they broke the covenant they had just made, but between the time they said, we will do all the words of this law, we will obey, from the time they said that, to the time they went up the mountain, they broke the covenant. You will break the covenant of works, before you leave the parking lot this morning. Some of you, judging by what I've seen over the years, I'm not pointing fingers, will probably break the covenant of works in the parking lot. God is gracious. And he calls Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu. And they go up and they see God. Now, do they see God as he really is in himself without any mediation? No, look at the next phrase. There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone. Like the very heaven for clarity. This is a signal that they saw a vision. They saw a representation. They saw a mediation of God. No one can see God and live. No one can see God and live. No one has seen the Father at any time, Jesus said. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Nevertheless, they did see God did manifest himself to them in a real way, and they didn't die. Look at verse 11. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They beheld God and ate and drank. Not only did they see God in a representation, and not only did they not die, They entered into communion. That's our God. That's our gracious covenant-making and covenant-keeping God. Israel did not keep the terms of this covenant. Israel broke the covenant when he brought the tablets down the mountain. He heard them having risen up to play, which is a euphemism for more than playing, children. When it says playing, it doesn't mean going out in the yard and playing tag. It means wickedness and sin. They broke the covenant before he ever made it down the mountain with the tablets. And so Moses broke the tablets as a symbolic gesture to say, you've broken the covenant already. And yet God was faithful to Israel. Time and time again, Israel broke the covenant. And time and time again, God came to them and said, I will be a God to you and to your people after you. And so he has come to us, beloved. We who have broken the covenant in our hearts and in our minds and with our wills and with our hands and with our eyes, you men, and in our hearts, you women. You children, when you've shaken your fist at your parents and said, I'll show you, God is gracious. But how is it possible to appear before the living God How is it possible to enter into fellowship with the living God? Well, it only happens over the basis of a victim shed blood and death. Now think about this whole picture that we've seen in Exodus 24. The mediator of the covenant comes down. He declares the will of God. Then there is bloodshed. And the people take an oath over a dead body. And then the mediator of the covenant goes back up the mountain, as it were. So you have a coming down, a making of a covenant over a dead body. This is the covenant in my blood. This is the new covenant in my blood. Take, eat, drink, remember, believe. And then the mediator of the covenant goes up the mountain and all of the people with him and in him. Who was that victim? Who was that mediator? His name is Jesus. He came. Moses never entered into the promised land. Moses broke God's covenant. But Jesus came and he never broke it. He kept all 613 commandments, every moment of every life, every day. He loved you so much from all eternity that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under the law, Paul says, suffered under Pontius Pilate, we confess in the Apostles' Creed. For you. For you. For you. He didn't sacrifice oxen or bulls or goats or sheep. John the Baptist said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It was no sheep, though. It was no bull, no goat, who said on the cross, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. He was forsaken for you. All the covenant sanctions symbolized by Moses shedding and sprinkling and baptizing of blood, it all came on him. The day you eat thereof, you shall surely die. He was innocent. He bore the curse for your eating. You said, we will do, and you did not. He did and died for you. But he had the power of an indestructible life. We laid his cold body in the tomb, but he didn't stay. because he was righteous, because he was good, because he met the terms of the covenant for you. It's works for him. It's righteousness for him. But it's free, gracious acceptance for you when you trust in that victim over whose body the covenant was made. This is my body, which is broken for you. Eat, drink, remember, and believe. Amen. Almighty God and merciful Father, we give you thanks this morning for that bloody new covenant that you have accepted us in Jesus Christ, that he has accomplished all for us. We give you thanks for the new covenant that is in his body. in his blood. And we accept it again by the gift of faith that you have worked in our hearts by your gracious Holy Spirit. Hear our prayer for his sake, our lamb, our victim, our mediator. In Jesus, amen.