March 16 – Exodus Week 11

Main Focus: In Christ, God offers us a promise that’s impervious to our promise-breaking, and that’s worth celebrating.

This week we’ll turn to the actual covenant-making moment at Mt. Sinai, when God and his people are promised to each other. We’ll sit in the tension of Israel’s foolhardy promises, letting it read us and identify our habitual underestimations of what obedience and disobedience both require. Then we’ll turn to Hebrews 10 to see how Christ offers us a far better covenant through his blood.

A few things stand out in this passage. First, notice the way God invites Moses, Aaron, and other leaders to come near to him (24:1-2). The whole book of Exodus has been leading to this idea: How can an unholy people approach a holy God? And yet, even here, there are limits—only Moses can go all the way up the mountain (24:2). The people are still at a distance, which reminds us that something is still incomplete.

But perhaps what will stick out most to your group members is how bloody this passage is; basins of blood poured on the altar and, repulsively, tossed on the crowds of people. Though, as we’ll discuss, the blood is warranted because this is a covenant ceremony. The blood epitomizes the life-and-death nature of the commitment the people are making to their God. And we’ll ask why God would call them to make this sort of binding promise to him to see the sort of relationship God is after, the kind that humans have been breaking with him since the Garden, one in which we creatures enjoy our Creator in perfect fellowship that is otherwise ruptured by sinful disobedience.

In short, God is after their hearts here, and in short order the Law will expose how divided their hearts are. We’ll notice in the passage how quick Israel was to promise their obedience, considering in just a few chapters they’ll break that promise (Exodus 32). However, that’s not merely out of an overestimation of their ability or an underestimation of sin; likely they were so quick to commit because they were standing at the base of a smoking mountain which declared the might of this God, and quite recently they had been liberated from slavery by him. Optimistic promises aside, they were right to desire obedience to this God because of his might and glory and goodness towards them.

Reading about Israel will give us room to notice when we similarly overestimate our ability to obey God or underestimate the effects of sin on our lives. Perhaps, like Israel, we’re quick to devote ourselves to God when we’re in awe of him or when his actions in our life are fresh in our memory; and perhaps, like Israel, those reasons to worship God are often quick to evaporate from our minds. We’ll turn to Hebrews 10:1-25 to see how Christ offers a solution to our faulty abilities and assessments. There the author of Hebrews (we don’t know who wrote it) explains how Christ opened a better way for us than the perpetual offering of sacrifice for inevitable disobedience. Notice how verses 19-25 describe all the benefits here: confidence as we relate to the Lord, full assurance, cleansing of sin, and hope.

We’ll close with, “What do you think it looks like for us to enjoy that better option?” That’s to say, how can we regularly let the grace of God in Christ overcome our hearts in gratitude and wonder? The question before it recognizes the fact of the matter: Christ secured for us a better way to God than was offered through the Law (which is an understatement, since no one can be saved by works of the law; cf. Rom 3:20). But this question gives us room to connect emotionally with that fact, to cultivate the sort of overwhelming awe that should come to our minds when we ponder the joy of our salvation.