Thursday Night Bible Study

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Exodus 23:14-Exodus 24 

"Drawing Close"  •  3.24.11  •  Calvary Christian Fellowship, Thursday Night Bible Study

Intro.

- God has seen the bondage and suffering of His people in the land of Egypt. He has delivered them and brought them out of that land.

- A little over three months after their deliverance, God brings them to Mt. Sinai, where He gives His law, codified in the 10 Commandments to them.

- What follows and what we have just covered are judgments given to the judges of Israel. You can say that these are some applications of the 10 Commandments.

- We are coming to the end of this section tonight, as we look toward the end of chapter 24.

Text

•  Exodus 23:14-19  :  "Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year: You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty); and the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field. Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God. You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leavened bread; nor shall the fat of My sacrifice remain until morning. The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk."  :  These feasts were major occasions for celebration and excitement for God's people.

- These feasts were at least a week long and their united hearts of purpose made these wonderful occasions.

- The Feast of Unleavened Bread takes place in the spring, in March and April. This is to be held in the same month as their emancipation from Egypt.

- The second feast is called the Feast Of Harvest, also known as the Feast of Pentecost, which is a little over a month later.

- This is the first time that we have heard about this feast. They were to bring the firstfruits of their labors. We'll learn that these were to be brought to the priests.

- The third mandatory feast was the Feast of Ingathering known also as the Feast Of Tabernacles, which would happen in late September, early October.

- Every male was to come before the Lord to bring their sacrifice to the Lord.

- These were feasts that celebrated their past and that pointed to their future. We are looking at the Final Passover when Christ died. The Feast Of Pentecost was fulfilled in the birth of the church.

- Several scholars believe that the rapture will fulfill that final feast when Jesus calls His people, the Church, into the air to join Him.

- Then we have this strange word. You shall not boil a young goat in it's mother's milk. We are at a disadvantage, in that we do no know everything that was going on in these ancient times.

- They knew what was meant. It's likely a cultic fertility practice that the Canaanites practiced.

- The Jews later used this as a springboard for kosher eating, which is why you can't get a cheeseburger in Israel today! For now, take note of this for a little later.

•  Exodus 23:20-22  :  "Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries." : This Angel is sent first to protect them. He is going to keep them. God does not send His people along without the proper protection.

- He had begun a work, delivering them from Egypt. He is currently making plans to lead them and protect them along the way, keeping them in line.

- Ultimately, God is going to bring them into the land that He has envisioned and established.

- He is leaving nothing to chance. The same can be said of the process that is unfolding in your life: He has begun a work, He is guiding and protecting you now, and He will bring you home!

- In the same way that He prepared Canaan for Israel, He has prepared Heaven for us!

- This Angel is no ordinary angel. They were to beware of Him and to listen to His voice. He was given authority over them. They were not to provoke Him

- He is endowed with the same authority and power as God Himself. God lets them know that God's very name is in Him. They are a unit, working together to lead the people of God.

- This Angel is none other than a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ. Theologians call this a "Theophany" or "Christophany."

- God and His Son were in partnership long before Jesus took on human flesh and "incarnated." Before the world was formed, the Son worked alongside His Father in creation.

- Here, the Angel leads the people along their journey to the promised land. When the people obeyed His voice and did all that God spoke, they gained an allie in the Lord.

- Their enemies would have to fight against the Lord.

- I think that there is an important principle here: God wants His people to follow His Word! There is a promise of safety for them. There is a promise that He will defend them.

- The only safety in this life, the best position that we can be in, is when we are following His Word. Trouble may come, but even so, if we are in His Word, there will be peace and purpose.

- Like Paul and Silas, there will be singing in prison. Like Peter, there will be sleeping the night before an execution. Like Paul before Agrippa, there will be confidence to testify.

- The Lord promises to be our enemy's enemy when we are obedient to the Word.

•  Exodus 23:23-26  :  "For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works; but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days."  :  God is letting them know that the Angel will keep them in the way and lead them into battle.

- All of these nations stood before the Israelites in the land of Canaan. We'll hear a lot about them as we continue through the Old Testament.

- They were all Semitic cousins to the Hebrews. Their origins are covered in Genesis. They have common ancestry but these nations had obviously chosen other foundations.

- Each of them represented increasingly odious brands of idolatry. In the eyes of the Lord, their sin had filled up the land and the people were now objects of His wrath.

- God calls Israel to action, calling them to fully repudiate their worship. Part of their worship to God would be to pull down the pillars and completely overthrow these people.

- It is not a racial war. It's a holy war. It's the gods of the Canaanites versus the God of the Hebrews. These people have magnified false idols. God would now bring them down.

- While He allows these people to fall under the weight of their own belief systems, God's people are promised a blessing in regards to their provisions, their health and their posterity.

- Notice this phrase: No one shall suffer a miscarriage or be barren. I imagine that this is a call back to the fertility practice mentioned in verse 19. God was going to make them fruitful in the land.

- How would God do this? These were not warriors with weapons. This is no problem for God.

•  Exodus 23:27-29  :  "I will send My fear before you, I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you."  :  God was going to use some very creative methods to secure the land of Canaan. First, He would send His fear in advance of them.

- The fear of God would grip the nations in front of Israel. The terror of what God would be capable of will be a major threat to these nations.

- The nations will remember what God had done to Egypt. They will know what power He possessed and it will shake them.

- Where there is fear, there would also be confusion. This word is translated several different ways. It's translated confounded, discomfitted, thrown into confusion and consternation.

- In the original language, there is a sense of the use of noise. God was going to allow some noise to come over various nations and they'd turn from Israel.

- Finally, when God wanted to use something even more creative, He'd use hornets to drive them out! Hornets!

- The point is that God has a lot of methods to clear the field when it needs to be cleared! The people would not need weaponry or experience. They would not need anything other but the Lord.

•  Exodus 27:30,31  :  "Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land. And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea, Philistia, and from the desert to the River. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you."  :  I absolutely love this. In our study of God to this moment, we have watched God do things in an orderly fashion.

- He could have said "Universe" and it would have been. Instead, we see Him create different things on different days. He could have picked up Abraham and just moved He and His family.

- In the most recent example, God could have destroyed Egypt with a single word. He could have made it so that people had never heard of Egypt!

- In my life, He does things little by little! Small thing after small thing. In the life of the Israelites, they faced a daunting challenge.

- God says, I'll do this little by little until you have increased, until you have become fruitful.

- This does not mean that God sees a time in their future when He would just up and leave them because now they were big enough to handle things on their own.

- There will be new challenges for them and the truth is that we will never outgrow the need for God in our lives, nor will there ever be a time when we outgrow the challenge before us.

- God is simply describing to them in language that they can understand, that what He plans to do will take time, but that He will do it!

- God tells them of the Red Sea to the Med Sea, Philistia and the desert to the Jordan River, an area of 300,000 square miles, the would belong to them. This would be all theirs!

- This being said, they would only ever take a tenth of it at their zenith under Solomon!

- That however, was God's gift to them and His intention for them. In the end, they left a lot on the table! They didn't take all that was given to them!

•  Exodus 23:32,33  :  "You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.'"  :  The Israelites were not to make any agreements with these nations and by proxy, their gods.

- The people of Israel were to be an extension of God's arm against these wicked nations. They were to be God's instruments for their destruction.

- They were not to make friends with the world or allow them to live in their land. Why? Simply because their influence would bring sin against the Lord.

- The influence of the people of Israel would not be enough to bring these nations into complicity with the Lord's covenant. God has seen the depths that they have gone toward.

- God knows that the people of Israel are more prone to compromise than they are to truly be agents of restoration. They will be tripped up and trapped if they don't follow God's instructions.

•  Exodus 24:1-4  :  "Now 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. And Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but they shall not come near; nor shall the people go up with him.' So Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice and said, 'All the words which the Lord has said we will do.' And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. And 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."  :  God has been talking to the people and now He wanted to have them draw near and to worship.

- The people wanted to be people that kept God's word. They intended to follow Him. But their self confidence was way off the charts! Soon, we'll see what happens with their statement.

- Moses wrote all these words of the Lord and built a series of altars for their worship service.

•  Exodus 24:5-8  :  "Then he sent young men of the children of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, 'All that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient.' And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, 'This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words.'"  :  This is a testament to how much confidence that Moses had in the people of Israel. They said that they would follow the Lord's commands, but here, he brings blood in.

- Sacrifice was a major part of the worship of God. Blood would ratify the covenant that they were committing themselves to.

- He put the blood on the Altar and then sprinkled the blood over the people. The blood of the sacrifice was to be applied to the people, just as it must be applied to our hearts today!

- Christ's blood must be personally applied to our lives. 

•  Exodus 24:9-14  :  "Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel. And there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity. But on the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank. Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Come up to Me on the mountain and be there; and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and commandments which I have written, that you may teach them.' So Moses arose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up to the mountain of God. And he said to the elders, 'Wait here for us until we come back to you. Indeed, Aaron and Hur are with you. If any man has a difficulty, let him go to them.'"  :  Now that the blood has been applied, God shows His people a vision of His majesty.

- It is said that they saw God, but scripture says elsewhere that nobody can see God and live. This was likely a vision, not unlike the one that John the Revelator saw.

- What is important is that the blood was applied and then access occurred! They had fellowship in the presence of the Lord. What a phenomenol visit they must have had.

- Moses was now going to go up and be with the Lord for the next 40 days. Moses had written the law down to communicate it, but now God was going to write it on stone to illustrate something.

- These commandments could not be erased. They were either broken or kept! That's what the tablets were meant to show.

- While Moses and Joshua were gone, Moses told the people to come to Aaron and Hur if they had a difficulty. That will be a problem soon!

•  Exodus 24:15-18  :  "Then Moses went up into the mountain, and a cloud covered the mountain. Now the glory of the Lord rested 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. The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. So Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights."  :  Moses was going into the presence of the Lord to receive the measurements for the Tabernacle, which we'll begin looking at soon.

- He went in and the rest of the people saw fire and a cloud. 40 days and 40 nights. What does that remind you of? The number 40 is the number of testing in scripture.

- Moses was not being tested. The people were being tested. Would they follow God, the One that Moses represented, without Moses being there? We'll see soon.

- But what a glorious moment for Moses. Here He gets to be as close to the Lord as any human being on Earth has ever had the privilege of having.

- It was on the 7th day that God and Moses would begin their talk. Interesting. On a day of rest. That is the picture of the believer if there ever was one.

- He has God's law. He has the blood of Jesus applied to His life. He has fellowship and when He is at rest, God calls Him in to enter His rest as well!

Conclusion

- We have been given a new covenant, one based on the faithfulness of Christ, who has perfectly kept God's law. His blood has been applied to our lives and we are clean.

- Are you acting like it? Let's remember that Jesus died to make it so!