The “further up and further in” we go, the table keeps getting bigger, the guest list keeps getting longer, and the grace keeps on flowing.
Moses’s ears might still have been ringing with the blasts of trumpets when he was invited further up Sinai’s summit, where the Lord was set to disclose even more of his heart for his people. God’s initial revelation of himself was nothing short of momentous, with thunder and lightning to boot (Exod. 19:16), and yet, as the page turns to Chapter 24, we are presented not only with another instance of God showing up, but also one that’s even more spectacular.
1. Pulling Back the Curtain
I’m reminded of that line from The Last Battle, the seventh and final entry in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, where the Pevensie children enter Aslan’s realm and find it bigger and richer, and “more real and more beautiful” than they could have ever imagined. This is when Mr. Tumnus explains that “the further up and the further in you go” in that space, “the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.” As Mr. Tumnus goes on to say, Aslan’s world is “like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.” [1]
Opening God’s Word is like that: it’s like setting foot in a story that never stops unfurling. The “further up and further in” you go, the more there is to see and discover, and once you think you’ve reached the bottom, a whole new cavern opens up in front of you. Similarly, this is what was happening for Moses and the elders who were with him, as their covenant-making God drew them further up and further into himself, cracking open the wardrobe door and tipping his cap to where he is leading, not just Moses and the multitude, but all the children of promise. And it’s so much better than we could ever imagine.
2. The Inside Is Larger Than the Outside
By this time, Moses had been on the mountain for quite a while, taking in what he could as the Lord conveyed “all the rules” his people were meant to follow (Exod. 24:3; cf. 21:1). But as that part of the covenant-making ceremony came to a close, God instructs Moses that there is more for him to witness, and this time, his brother and the rest of the elders were invited to be there with him: “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’” (Exod. 24:1–2).
The one who is outside of time and space is keen on entering space and time to be near us.
In so doing, God is, in one sense, reiterating the fact that communion with him, East of Eden, happens through a mediator. When the Lord finished announcing the Decalogue, the Israelites were beside themselves, so much so that they cried out for Moses to speak to them on God’s behalf (Exod. 20:19). Moses’s summons, therefore, isn’t as an individual, but as Israel’s representative.
The Word of God pulls back the curtain on a God who desires to be in proximity with his people. The one who is outside of time and space is keen on entering space and time to be near us. Ours isn’t a god who is distant, remote, or uninvolved. No, he’s a God who comes close and keeps his people closer; distinguishing him from every other deity (Deut. 4:7). From impassioned worshipers to weary sinners, God’s words to us are, “Come near,” an invitation that’s ultimately realized in the Word who becomes flesh for us (John 1:14).
In other words, Jesus is God’s nearness in the form of a person. He’s the revelation of God’s desire for closeness, which is so great that instead of beckoning us to come up, he comes down. And in so doing, he shows us what it costs for all of us to have even better access to God than Moses had.
3. Come Up, Come Near
Following the invitation to “come up and come near,” Moses goes down to relay everything he’s heard to the rest of the people, prompting them to respond by affirming that they will listen to and obey all of God’s words (Exod. 24:3). Meanwhile, Moses prepares for the impending covenant confirmation ceremony by writing everything down in what’s called “The Book of the Covenant” (Exod. 24:7), and erecting an altar with twelve pillars encircling it, symbolizing all the tribes of Israel (Exod. 24:4–5). The whole thing is a portrait of relating to his people, and his people belonging to him, all due to what happened on top of that altar.
Altars, of course, weren’t pretty or pristine venues. They were places of blood, smoke, and death, with the stench of animal viscera preaching to everyone what being close to a holy God costs. Proximity to God comes at the price of blood; it’s made possible only through sacrifice, a fact that’s enacted through one of the most overt rituals in the Old Testament (Exod. 24:5–8).
Bookending Moses’s orations on the Book of the Covenant is the sprinkling of blood, some on the altar and some on the people, after which Moses declares that it was this blood that sealed and secured God’s covenant with them. The relationship between God and God’s people was anchored in blood that streamed down the sides of altars, serving as a graphic sermon about the price that’s paid so they can belong to him. A price, by the way, that the people don’t pay themselves; something else pays the price for them. “The animal,” John W. Hilber says, “was slaughtered and placed upon the fire of the altar,” making atonement, averting wrath, and establishing “fellowship with God.” [2]
Despite their unholy rebellion and failure to measure up to the Decalogue’s demands, the law-giving God makes a way for sin to be purged and his people to be reconciled to himself. Whatever holiness they lacked, which prevented them from getting close, was atoned for and resolved (Lev. 1:3–4; 4:20, 26, 31, 35). This is what the blood preaches: the forgiveness of sins that brings us into proximity to him (Eph. 2:13).
4. What the Blood Preaches
Whereas all the Levitical sacrifices functioned as IOUs, they never actually closed the account. But Jesus’s blood isn’t an IOU. Jesus’s blood actually does what it promises to do and gives what he says it’ll give: forgiveness of sins. One sacrifice: that’s all it took, and every last shred of debt we owe is settled. Resolved. Covered. Because just as the blood that was thrown on the altar is the same blood that was thrown on the people, the blood that was spilled on the cross to satisfy the Father’s righteous wrath is the same blood that absolves us. And this is what assures us that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins” (1 John 1:9), because all the blood necessary for our forgiveness has already been shed for us.
Jesus’s blood isn’t an IOU. Jesus’s blood actually does what it promises to do and gives what he says it’ll give: forgiveness of sins.
5. Seeing the God Who Cannot Be Contained
After the soul-stirring ceremony at the altar, Moses and the elders ascend the mountain once more, where they not only see something they never thought they’d see, but they also do something none of them ever thought they would do: “Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy 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” (Exod. 24:9–11).
Part of me wonders if everyone, except maybe Moses, was biting their nails as they ambled up the face of Sinai, since as far as anyone knew, no one was allowed up. But what exactly did they see?
As the Lord will later tell Moses, no one can see his face and live (Exod. 33:20), ruling that out. But what they did behold were God’s feet, or more precisely, God’s footstool (cf. Ps. 99:5; Ps. 132:7). With their eyes enamored by tiles of clear blue sapphire stone, as clear as the sky itself, they behold God’s feet propped up on nothing less than creation itself (Isa. 66:1), a luminous gesture to the Lord’s might and supremacy, which are as vast as the cosmos itself. And yet, this is the God who was eager to be in covenant relationship with them.
6. A Seat at the Table
The God who can’t be contained by heaven itself is keen on his people enjoying his presence, which means that Moses and the elders weren’t a bunch of presumptuous intruders, barging in uninvited. Rather, they were guests of honor, welcomed into God’s very presence by God himself. They’re not only not struck down for being there, but they’re also bid to sit and partake of the meal set before them; a meal which serves as a token of mercy, acceptance, and belonging.
But here is where the story of Scripture cracks wide open, especially for us. Because the meal on Sinai’s summit isn’t the end; it points us to something even better, to a meal that’s “more real and more beautiful” than that one. Further up and further in, we find another meal shared by God’s people and God himself, in the flesh this time (Mark 14:22–23). In an upper room, with a bunch of wide-eyed disciples staring back at him, Jesus stood in Moses’s place to do what Moses never could. The blood he offers as “the blood of the covenant” is his own, motioning us to the cross, where blood covers us and secures our standing before God Almighty.
And yet even that meal was but a foretaste of another, bigger meal, one that never comes to an end, “a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined,” where everyone’s invited, and death is no more (Isa. 25:6). The “further up and further in” we go, the table keeps getting bigger, the guest list keeps getting longer, and the grace keeps on flowing. From Sinai to Calvary to the End of All Things, God in Christ says to each one of us: “Come up, come near, and take a seat at my table.”
