In 2016, an anonymous bidder paid $3.46 million to have lunch with billionaire investor Warren Buffet. This individual spent on one lunch what it would cost to purchase nearly a million Happy Meals from McDonald’s! How many Happy Meals is lunch with Kyler Murphy or Taylor Swift worth to you? Would you dole out even $1,000 to grab a bite with a celebrity?
As we continue our sermon series, Moses: Made for More, we’ll see how a select number of Israelites got to eat with a celebrity of sorts. They ate with God! What made these men so special that they got to dine with the divine? Let’s find out so that one day we too can have lunch with the Almighty.
While the anonymous bidder met Buffet in a New York steak joint for their lunch, Moses and select elders from Israel had lunch with God on Mt. Sinai—the same mountain from which God issued the Ten Commandments. Upon hearing God speak there, the Israelites quickly promised to obey everything the Lord commanded. They made this promise not once, not twice, but three different times (Ex. 19:8; 24:3, 7).
What kind of preparations did the anonymous bidder make for his lunch with Buffet? Did he try on two or three different outfits? Whether he chose to wear a business suit or something more casual, you can bet that his clothes were spotless. He wasn’t going to show up to dinner with one of the richest and most famous people in the world with breakfast oatmeal caked on his blazer.
In the same way if you want to dine with the divine, you better dress appropriately, that is, you better dress to perfection. If, for example, you think you can stand in God’s presence after consistently abusing his gift of alcohol without remorse, you will be quickly removed the way a drunken heckler would be removed from a sports arena. Or if you think it’s too much of a hassle to curb a gossiping tongue, you run the risk of being denied entrance into heaven, the way someone ignoring the dress code at a fancy restaurant will be denied entrance.
God’s Word is not like the menu at Burger King. Burger King is a restaurant that encourages you to order meals to your liking. If you don’t want onions on your burger, just say so. It doesn’t work that way with God’s commands. You may not like the fact that God has commanded us to forgive those who have hurt us—to forgive them even before they ask for forgiveness. But ignore this command at your own peril. Only those who promise obedience to all of God’s commands will one day dine with the divine. If we don’t want to promise this kind of obedience, then let’s be honest. We want religion on our terms, not God’s. But that’s nothing less than self-worship, not worship of the one true God.
The reason God wants us to live on his terms is because it’s what’s best for us. If Buffet told his dining companion to wear a snowsuit to their lunch, the anonymous bidder might feel silly doing so. He’d probably even refuse unless he found out that their lunch was taking place near the South Pole. Friends, because we’ve never seen God, we don’t really know what it will be like to stand in his presence. Don’t you think it would be foolish to ignore what God tells us about how we should prepare for this meeting? It’s Satan who wants you to show up to this meeting underdressed. If you want to dine with the divine, then promise to obey every one of God’s commands—no matter how silly or how difficult those commands may seem to you.
But it’s one thing to promise obedience and quite another to actually be obedient, isn’t it? The Israelites knew that to be true. Just 40 days after they promised obedience to the Lord, they broke the First Commandment when they made an idol in the form of a golden calf and pranced around it in wild celebration (Exodus 32). We’ll hear more about that shocking event in our sermon next week.
But we already learned how the Israelites were guilty of sinning when they grumbled over the lack of food and water during the first days of their journey in spite of God’s promise to provide for them. So how could a holy God allow unholy people to dine with him? Because they had been sprinkled with cleansing blood. Here’s how that happened.
After receiving all the commands from God, Moses relayed them to the people. Moses then had young men offer animal sacrifices before the Lord. He proceeded to read again God’s commands which he had written down in the Book of the Covenant. After the people promised obedience, Moses took some of the blood from the sacrifices and dribbled it onto the Book of the Covenant (Heb. 9:19-20). He then spattered the people with the rest of the blood! As he did this, Moses said: “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.” (Exodus 24:8)
If Warren Buffet and the anonymous bidder made any business deals at their luncheon, the contracts would have been signed in ink. God, however, signs his contracts in blood. Can you imagine being spattered with blood as were the Israelites? If you experienced it, I doubt you would ever forget it. And that was the point. Moses wanted the Israelites to forever remember how they had just promised God their loyalty, and how God had promised the Israelites his loyalty to them. The blood sealed that promise.
The blood also underscored another promise God made—like how you might underline an important date on the family calendar in red ink. The blood of all the animals sacrificed during Old Testament times, pointed to the blood that Jesus, the Messiah, would shed for the sins of the world. The writer to the Hebrews put it like this: “The blood of goats and bulls…sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” (Hebrews 9:13b-14)
God has promised that through the blood of Jesus all sins are forgiven. This was the reason God did not strike down the Israelite elders when they came into his presence to eat (Exodus 24:11). He really should have but when he saw the blood sprinkled on them, he was reminded (not that he needed reminding) of the blood his Son would shed to pay for the sins that they had committed and would ever commit.
The sprinkling of blood and eating in God’s presence—does that remind you of anything we do here? Sure. The Lord’s Supper. When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, he used almost the exact words Moses did at Mt. Sinai. When he gave the wine to his disciples Jesus said, “This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28) In the Lord’s Supper we, like the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, are sprinkled with blood—not just any blood but the blood of the covenant—the eternal promise that God makes to us sinners. Our sins, no matter how big they may seem to us, have been forgiven. Believe it and benefit by enjoying access to the God of the universe like the Israelite elders did.
As the elders ate their lunch on Mt. Sinai, they saw God—though not in his full glory. Much to our disappointment, Moses doesn’t describe what God looked like. He only describes what God was standing on: “something like a pavement made of sapphire stone, as clear as the sky itself.” (Ex. 24:10 – HCSB) How much can you tell about a person by looking down at their feet? Well, if the feet are clad in the latest hi-tech running shoe, you would assume the person wearing them is a serious runner and is probably in good shape. If someone is wearing hand-made Italian dress shoes, you would assume the person has money and may spend a lot of time in boardrooms as a CEO or in courtrooms as a high-powered attorney. So what can we learn about God when we hear that he was standing on pavement that looked like sapphire? This flooring detail is similar to what the prophet Ezekiel (1:22) and the Apostle John describe (Rev. 4:6) in their visions of God’s throne. Was this perhaps God’s unspoken message to the Israelite elders? “Sure, we’re having a picnic in the middle of a wilderness, but my throne and control center is right here. Even though your footing might not seem so secure, mine is. I’m standing on level ground and I will clear the way before you to the Promised Land.”
What the Israelite elders saw may have been an illustration of what God had said in the previous chapter. “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared…my Name is in him… 27 I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. 28 I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.” (Exodus 23:20-21, 27-28) The angel with God’s name “in him” seems to be the pre-incarnate Christ—the Son of God before he took on human flesh and was born as Jesus. We know he accompanied the Israelites on their journey, both guiding and defending them (1 Cor. 10:4; Ex. 14:19; 33:2). “The hornet” may be a colorful metaphor for the dread that gripped the Canaanites. After the LORD stung Israel’s enemies like Egypt and the Amalekites with defeat, a spirit of terror winged its way to future opponents to paralyze them just as hornets on the attack outside our church doors would cause you to cower inside until the threat had passed (Adolph Harstad – paraphrased).
But the Israelite journey to the Promised Land was not a walk in the park. We’ve already learned through this series how God often took the Israelites right to and through challenges to exercise Israelite faith in him as their trustworthy provider. He did that when the Israelites ran out of food and water early on in the journey. At the right time and in the right way though, God came through with provisions as he promised he would.
But there were other times when the Israelites only had themselves to blame for their difficulties. God had warned that the “angel” who accompanied them would “not forgive their rebellion.” (Ex. 23:21) As we will see next week in the sermon about the golden calf incident, there were consequences for impenitent rebellion. So yes, while the true God is a God of love and grace, he remains a holy and just God. If we continue in our sins without repentance, God will punish us eternally for them and we will not get to dine with the divine.
But God’s overarching message to the elders who dined in his presence on Mt. Sinai was one of comfort. God was reassuring them: “I am with you because there is a bond between us—a blood bond.” Do you realize that the blood Jesus shed for you gives you that same access to God, even if you’ve never seen God like the Israelite elders did? The writer to the Hebrews gives us this confidence: “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess… 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:14, 16)
You might not have $3.46 million to buy lunch with Warren Buffet during which you might get some red-hot investing tips. But so what. That kind of cash is not needed to dine with the divine. In the person of Jesus, God came and made his home with us. And thanks to the forgiveness that Jesus gives us, one day we will get to move in with God and eat with him. Here’s how the prophet Isaiah described the blessing: “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. 7 On this mountain he will destroy… the sheet that covers all nations; 8 he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces... The LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 25:6-8) Dining with the divine. It’s what we believers will get to do not just once in a while but forever. Thanks to Jesus and the blood that he shed, we have indeed been made and remade for more. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
(pre-service warm up) Due to the length of the sermon text, Pastor will not read it in its entirety during the service. Do so now from the bulletin. Underline any details you find interesting or have questions about.
(pre-service warm up) What’s the most expensive meal you’ve paid for?
Explain: If you want to dine with the divine, you better dress appropriately, that is, you better dress to perfection.
In what way is God’s Word not like the menu at Burger King?
The Israelite elders were not “dressed to perfection” and yet they got to dine with the divine. Why?
As Moses sprinkled the Israelites with the blood from animal sacrifices, he said: “This is the blood of the covenant.” What other cleansing act does this remind you of?
What might be the significance of learning that the elders saw God standing on “something like a pavement made of sapphire stone, as clear as the sky itself” (Ex. 24:10 – HCSB)?
God had earlier promised to send an “angel” ahead of the Israelites. What comfort and what warning was there for the Israelites?
God had also promised to send “the hornet.” Who or what was that?
Like the Israelites, we have full access to God. How can you be certain of this?
You might not have $3.46 million to buy lunch with Warren Buffet during which you might get some red-hot investing tips. But so what. That kind of cash is not needed to dine with the divine. Underline words or phrases that bring you comfort from the following passage.
“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. 7 On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; 8 he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces... The LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 25:6-8)
