Our scripture reading is from Exodus 24, once again, but our text will be the verses 9 and following, but we'll read the whole chapter because it's really a unit talking about the confirmation of the covenant. For the hymn sing, we sang the song, Be Thou My Vision, and this evening we're going to talk a little bit about God and our view of God. The covenant confirmed in Exodus 24, then he 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, but Moses alone is to approach the Lord, and the others must not come near, and the people may not come up with him. 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. 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. Then he sent young Israelite men and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he sprinkled on the altar. 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. 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. And then our text is from here on in. Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of Israel, of the Israelites. They saw God, and they ate and drank. The Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commands I have written for their instruction. Then Moses set out with Joshua his aid, and Moses went up on the mountain of Gond. He said to the elders, Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them. When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. Then Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. Thus far the reading of God's holy word. Dear people of God, called to be saints, as I mentioned, we sang that song, Be Thou My Vision. To see God, it's really something we desire, isn't it, as believers? Gazing upon God is the most wonderful thing a person could possibly have. to know God as He is, to behold the person of God in the only way we really can, in the glorious face of His Son, Jesus Christ. There is nothing in all creation to compare with gazing upon the beauty of God, and we shall. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. We catch a picture of this beauty in Exodus 24 where God has invited Moses to come and to meet with him. After that ceremony of covenantal renewal Then we read that Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel went up on the mountain and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sand. As clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against the leaders. They saw God and they ate and they drank. Does that surprise you in any way? They saw God and ate and drank. Isn't looking upon God supposed to be fatal? Later God says to Moses in Exodus 33, No one may see me and live. And yet in this passage we are told twice that the leaders of Israel saw God and lived. The word saw implies gaze. There's a problem here. Since we read in John chapter 6, verse 46, no one has seen the Father except the one who is from God, only he has seen the Father. And in John 1.18 we read, no one has ever seen God. And that's repeated also in 1 John 4 verse 12. So what is meant here by see God? Now God's quite aware that we're going to be puzzled by this because He says in verse 11, God did not raise His hand against the leaders of the Israelites. He knew what we'd be thinking. So God simply explained that he did not raise his hand against the leaders of the Israelites. Clearly something happened here that could have resulted in the death of these leaders of the people, these representatives of the people. But they did not die because of God's grace. They had a visual encounter with God and lived. The question is, what did they see? And we're not told. We're told more of the surroundings and what was under his feet. And even that is very hard to explain, to describe. It was something like a pavement made of sapphire. And the word pavement, of course, you understand what that means, it's usually a floor, outside or inside, made of stone, brick, that kind of a thing, tile. Here it's made of a brilliant blue stone, which usually is cloudy, but in this case is clear, like the blue sky. Nothing is said about what God looked like. And maybe that's because all they had was a visual manifestation, a vision of God, because God is Spirit. Maybe what happened is they came into contact with His vision and they fell before Him. The only reason they could describe the pavement was because their nose was on the ground. They could see his feet, they could see the pavement, and they were lying prostrate before him. Maybe that was the case. That's a position we take whenever we enter into the presence of God, spiritually. I know we sit and we stand, and not too many of us lie down prostrate. Spiritually, that's what we do when we gather for worship. He's a great God, and we bow in humble awe and adoration. But then again, it could be that what it was is that the elders were looking up, and they could only see a reflection of God through the pavement. If you compare this vision To Ezekiel's vision of God, there you also read of a pavement. Spread out above was what looked like an expanse sparkling like ice and awesome, Ezekiel 1. Perhaps that's what Moses is describing, this flawless sheet of ice blue glass. And through it, Ezekiel could see God, way above. We read, Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire, and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. Verses 26-28 of Ezekiel 1. Perhaps that's what they saw. But it's interesting, neither Ezekiel nor Moses Nor Isaiah in chapter 6 could describe God with specifics. Ezekiel in chapter 1 is struggling. He uses words like, well, it looked like, it was as if, it was the appearance of the likeness of. I mean, those are vague expressions. Ezekiel is struggling here. He's under the inspiration of the Spirit, but still he is struggling. And Moses too, he struggles. How can you adequately describe God who is infinite in glory, in beauty, in holiness, in purity? Who is Spirit, who dwells in unapproachable light. All you can say is, well, we saw something like... Whatever they did see of God went beyond the boundaries of human language. And we must not go beyond the limits drawn in Scripture in our conceptions of what constituted the sight of God. They had some sort of vision, some sort of theophany, that communicated to them the beauty, the glory, the nature of God. But nothing is said of His form, and we must be careful not to speculate or to try to put in image form what they saw. That's what pagans do, you know. They're always making images of God. reducing God to the form of men, or the form of beasts, or the form of something in creation. And in a short while here, Israel is going to fall into the same trap. They're going to make a golden calf to represent God. Because people, they're not settled with What seems like it's as if they want something concrete. They want to have something that our minds can get around, that our hands can feel, and we can smell, and we can taste. But God continues to hide himself from view, even here, before these representatives of the people who were permitted to come up on the mountain. On Thanksgiving Day we were reading from and discussing Psalm 145 with the family and our granddaughter commented that God did not seem to be near. Well, that evoked, of course, some further conversation. And when we went farther, well, God didn't seem near because she couldn't see him. She could see her father. He knew he was there. But she couldn't see God, so God didn't seem near. And see, that's what people like. They want to have the nearness, and so they make something to see or to feel or to taste or to touch. And many people have to see before they will believe. And God is really saying, you're not going to see unless you believe. If you believe, you will see. Blessed are the pure in heart. They shall see God. He reveals himself in the presence of his son. And when Christ comes again in the clouds of glory, we will see the glory of God manifested in him. And that's why John says, no one has ever seen God, but God, the one and only who was at the Father's side, has made him known. Israel's elders were granted an exceptional vision of seeing God's glory in advance, a sneak preview, a glimpse. And the purpose of this is to show what it means to be saved. Exodus 24 is telling the story of salvation. A people who are separated from God because of sin, but God calls them and brings them near to Him in covenant with Him. He gives them His Word. He atones for their sins. He covers them with His blood. He brings them into His presence where they could gaze upon the Lord. That's a foretaste of the heavenly realities. That's what this is here. A foretaste. By faith we enter into the presence of God. And we can see by faith the beauty of God. That's what Exodus 24 is all about. It's the story of salvation. God has brought us into covenant with Him. He atoned for our sins through the blood of the covenant, the blood of Christ sprinkled on the cross. Cleansed, we are brought into His presence by faith, and we will soon be welcomed into His glorious presence. And that's when the longing of our hearts will be satisfied. And we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Now, notice something. These men on the mountain, there is never anything that has happened more glorious than this. To see God is one of the greatest privileges and developments that believers are capable of. To catch a vision even by faith is a gift of grace. To catch a single glimpse of God is to behold a beauty that is dazzling beyond all imagination and perfect beyond all thought. These men are there in the mountains. This is a mountaintop, well, partway up, experience. But they not only saw God, they ate and drank. Think on that. We don't know what they ate and drank, we're not told that, but it was a meal. And what that means, it was a covenant fellowship meal. You know, it was common. for people back then when making a covenant that following the covenant and the ratification of it they would sit down for a meal together. Businessmen still get together over meals to make deals. When Isaac made a covenant with Abimelech And his army, we read, he made a feast for them and they ate and drank. Genesis 26. Jacob and Laban did the same thing when they were reconciled after Jacob's escape and they made this boundary they would not cross. It was a symbolic act of friendship. This eating and this drinking on the mountain was a symbol of covenantal fellowship with God. Israel, in a vicarious way, Israel was down the mountain, but vicariously, that is through the elders, Israel was having fellowship with God. Worship in the Old Covenant was vicarious. It was always through the priesthood. For us, it's by faith through Christ. But back then, it was always through the priesthood. In this case, it was through the elders. Few things establish a greater sense of fellowship than sharing a meal. You know very well that meals have a way of bringing people together, of molding friendships, developing closeness. Any gathering is more intimate when people share food. That's one of the reasons why it's very important that as families we maintain the practice of actually eating together, not just in the same room over a period of time. We sit down, we share fellowship, and we get close, we talk. It's one of the reasons why we have our monthly fellowship dinners, so we can sit with each other, and we can grow as a congregation. That's why sometimes we even go out to each other's homes and we have meals. And we eat together. And as I said, that's often why business is often conducted over meals. Sharing a meal is a powerful symbol of coming together. Intimacy. So you consider this meal, how special it was. And remember what we said last week. That what you see in Exodus 24 is not only a picture of salvation, but it's a picture of worship. Our worship services are basically a picture of the salvation that we have in Christ. But that's what Exodus 24 is. It's really a form of worship. It was a meeting with God, which is what worship is. And we saw last week, there's a call to worship. There's the reading of the Word. There's the confession of faith. There's a covenantal renewal in the blood. There's the sacramental meal. There's that sharing of food and drink that symbolized communion with God. Atonement is made for sin. And now the way is clear for fellowship with him who dwells in glory. The theme of eating and drinking runs all the way through scripture. Abraham welcomes an angel to his tent for dinner in Genesis 18. In Psalm 23, a psalm that is of great comfort in times of loss, David speaks of a table being prepared before him by God. Isaiah promised that one day God would sit down with his people at a great banquet. On this mountain, the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines, Isaiah 25. People from every nation will find a place at God's table, intimacy, fellowship with Him. Jesus came to be King. And he describes his kingdom in terms of eating and drinking. It's like a great banquet. Matthew 8, many will come from the east and the west and they will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. There was a place for everyone at the table. And God is still busy handing out the invitations to the feast. Every time the gospel is preached, people are invited to eat and to drink with God. God is getting ready, you would say, to throw the longest and the largest and the last banquet feast of all, what Revelation calls the wedding supper of the Lamb. And the way to RSVP is to believe in Jesus Christ. For all who trust in Him are invited to sit down at the feast that will never end. Preparations are underway. While we're waiting for the announcement, dinner's ready! God has given us a special meal. to remind us that we are His by covenant. Sin has been atoned for, and we may now have fellowship with Him by faith. And that meal is the Lord's Supper, a foretest of what is to come. The worship service in Exodus 24 included the ministry of both word and sacrament. It has implications for Christian worship. And the more I read of scripture, the more I see that scripture suggests, doesn't mandate, but suggests that our worship services should include both word and sacrament. And for sure, we should be having the sacrament and the word more often than we do. in the same way that the sprinkling of the covenant blood pointed toward baptism. So this meal on the mountain points to communion with God. Baptism marks our entrance into the covenant. The Lord's Supper marks our reception and continuance in the covenant by faith. We eat and drink around the table to show that we have fellowship with God. By establishing a new covenant in Christ's blood, God has welcomed us into His love. And what all this communicates, in Exodus 24 and when we have the Lord's Supper, what all of it communicates is that God wants a relationship with us. Again, if we want to build relationships with people, one of the best ways of doing it is over a meal. We'll invite people over. We'll invite people to the restaurant. Hey, we want to have a conversation. A meal, it helps. Well, God does the same. He wants us around His table. Do you want to enjoy this kind of fellowship with God? Well, Jesus is saying, here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with Me. That's what He's saying to us, to the church. That's not an evangelistic message, that's to the church, and it's a fellowship message. God wants us in fellowship with Him. Sometime after the meal, God called Moses to come closer by himself. The Lord said to Moses, verse 12, come up to me on the mountain and stay here. God's intent now was to give Moses the tablets of stone with the law and the commands that he's written for their instruction. Now what was written on those tablets? At the beginning of the chapter we read about words and laws and we understood that was referring to the Ten Commandments and the Book of the Covenant. Here the wording is different. and refers specifically to the Ten Commandments. And we know that because later on Moses said he declared to you his covenant of Ten Commandments which he commanded you to follow and then wrote on two stone tablets. Deuteronomy 4. Moses is going to break these tablets and later they would be rewritten. God you see is making a covenant with his people. And since it's a legally binding agreement, it was not only written down by Moses, but God himself wrote it into stone. And the words on that tablet, by the way, didn't come from Moses, like the liberals want us to think. You know, that Moses was sitting there thinking of some good laws and he took a little bit from that nation and that nation and that nation over there and he just compounded them narrowed them down to the basics. If that's what Moses did, we can go and live any way we want. God indicates. These laws came from Him. They were written by the finger of God. Now Moses had one last thing to do before making his final assault on the mountain. We read Moses set out with Joshua his aid, and Moses went up the mountain of God. But he said to the elders, Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and her are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them. It seems that they had come down from the mountain after the meal, since the elders and Aaron were not on the mountain during the absence of Moses. But Moses only took one companion with him who only went part way up the mountain again. And this is Joshua. It's an introduction to Joshua that's important because Joshua was, you would say, here in training. That's the role of church leaders and that is to train. Train those who would be leaders later on. And Moses here is teaching by example. It's important that this happen. It's also important for people to know a chain of command, particularly if there are absences. People need to know how to handle disputes and who to go to in the absence of a leader. And that's why Moses appoints Aaron and Hur. Those are the two who held up Moses' hands in the battle against the Amalekites. He said, wow, they really supported me in the battle. Their hands were strong, and so if you have Aaron and Hur, you're in good hands! Well, a lot can go wrong in 40 days, as we will see. Again, Exodus 24 is an important chapter. It's a climactic chapter in many ways because it lays out this biblical pattern for worship. It establishes God's covenant with his people on the basis of blood. It tells us how God gave his law. It shows us how mortal men can have fellowship with a holy God and live to tell about it. But the climax yet comes when Moses enters glory. When Moses went up the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called Moses from within the cloud to the Israelites. The glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain. And then Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. Have you ever noticed something about Moses? As you read through Exodus, he's getting closer and closer to God. He starts at the burning bush where he had to remove his shoes, for he was on holy ground. And then he speaks with God on the mountain, and he shares the covenantal meal. He's the appointed mediator to represent the people before God and this is back and forth. And now God is saying, come closer, come higher. Glory is often mentioned in Exodus. God's glory, of course, we know what that means, that's his reputation, that's the excellence of who he is. And His glory, His excellence is portrayed in various ways. And the intent was, as He says in Exodus 14, the whole intent of the exodus and all that's going on here was to gain glory to Himself. And therefore you see the spectacular burning bush, the incredible plagues, the awesome pillar of fire and cloud, the horrifying smoke and fire on Mount Sinai. It's glory upon glory. God is manifesting His power and His beauty. And now God calls Moses alone to come up and to enter into His glory, into the cloud itself that appeared to be like a ball of fire to the Israelites. Brothers and sisters, this is the story of our salvation. That's what Exodus is all about, you know that. First, here in Exodus 24, there's a call for us to worship God. But since we are separated from God by sin, a sacrifice had to be made through which we would be brought into fellowship with him. Once the sacrifice is made, we're also able to sit at this table for a more intimate fellowship based on the shed blood. But how does the story end? There will be a further entrance into glory. That's the goal of it all. of our salvation. Not just to see God, not just to sit down with Him in fellowship, but to share in His glory. What happens to Moses will happen to us. God will come in Christ to bring us to Himself in glory in the new heavens and in the new earth. God has come in Jesus Christ, of whom John said, we have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. No one has ever seen God, but the God, the one and only who is at the Father's side, has made His name known. We saw the glory of God in the face of Christ manifested on the cross. Jesus is the full expression of God's glory, the exact representation of His being so that Jesus said, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Of course not in that full beauty yet that awaits. But Jesus set aside His glory for a time that He could come here to bring us back into God's glory that we might worship Him on His holy mountain. What happens to Moses is a picture of what will happen to everyone who comes to God through faith in Christ. Our destiny is glory! The Bible says, look, He is coming with the clouds and every eye will see Him. It also says we will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we will be with the Lord forever. It's like in our life, we more and more and more come to know God and His beauty. But when this life is over, that's not the end of the journey. It goes farther. It goes even farther than Moses. Someday we will be surrounded by the radiance of God's glory. This almost seems unreal, doesn't it? Because we're such a people who live by sight. We live in a world whose beauty has been tragically marred by sin. And every day we have to live with the ugliness of our own sin. But we're on a journey, and there is something better waiting. We have been saved for the glory of God, and one day everyone who believes in Jesus will be lifted up into the brightness of His glory. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. We can't describe it now, just like Ezekiel and Moses, they couldn't describe it. But we do know that we are going to live forever in the new heavens in the north, enjoying the glory of God and His fellowship forever. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, Prepare yourself for glory that far outweighs all the suffering of this life. Amen.