060. Moses--The Tablets

Moses--The Tablets

Exo 24:15-18. And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount, in the eyes of the children of Israel. And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount; and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

Bread is not more necessary to the support of human life, than religion is to the happiness of a rational being. Man, in his better, his immortal part, “lives by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” In more than one instance the miracle has been exhibited, of sustaining the body without food, and yet no pain nor inconveniency felt; but for the soul to exist, and to exist in comfort, undirected by the precepts, unenlightened by the discoveries, unsupported by the consolations of religion, is a miracle not to be performed. It is the more to be lamented that the attempt is so often fatally made, of living “without God in the world;” of pursuing a happiness that is independent of the great Source of light and joy; of seeking peace, rest, and enjoyment in the neglect or violation of his commandments. Happy it is for man, if after having made the fruitless experiment of “seeking the living among the dead,” and after having at length discovered that success is vanity, and that disappointment is vexation of spirit, have been persuaded, before it was too late, to draw their felicity from the pure and never-failing sources of faith and a good conscience; happy they, who, reconciled to God through Christ Jesus their Lord, enjoy real tranquillity in life, and well-grounded hope in death.

We tremble as we behold Moses advancing to the summit of the burning mountain to meet God. Who can walk into the midst of a flaming furnace and live? But is it possible to remove from God an instant of time, a hair’s breadth of space? No: God is about our path and our bed, is watching our going out and coming in, our lying down end rising up. God is in this place: and, were our eyes opened, we should even now behold his face clothed with the frowns of just displeasure, or beaming with the smiles of paternal love. Was the law given by “the disposition of angels,” arrayed in all their majesty and might? O how benign their aspect, how affectionate their assiduity, how vigilant their care, could we but behold them, while they aid the preaching of the everlasting gospel, while they attend the assemblies of a Christian church, and minister to them who are the heirs of salvation! As the awfulness and solemnity of the prophet’s condition are not peculiar to him, and to that important occasion, so neither are the privileges which he enjoyed, nor the communion to which he was admitted, peculiar and personal. Christian, you have but to retire into your closet and to shut the door after you, and you are immediately on the top of a higher mountain than Moses climbed, and are near to God as he was in the most precious moments of the most intimate communication. Alone, or in company, we have access at all times to the throne of grace; and we have what gave him safety and confidence in drawing nigh unto God--an Advocate with the Father, a great High Priest, a Mediator betwixt God and us. The great Jehovah, having delivered in every circumstance of magnificence that could excite attention, procure respect, and enforce obedience, that law, whose general nature, tendency, and design, together with its relation to the evangelical dispensation, were the subject of a former Lecture, proceeded to regulate their civil polity. But not by an audible voice, in the ears of all the people, as he had done the law of the ten commandments, but in private conference with Moses, to be by him delivered to the people, he delivered those institutions of a civil and political nature, which regarded their social and national capacity. In studying these, the lovers of Scripture will rejoice to trace the justest and most comprehensive views of human nature, the noblest and most liberal ideas of legislation, the most perfect equity, the profoundest sagacity, and the most unbounded kindness and benevolence. But it exceeds our strength, and it consists not with our plan, to go into the detail of these excellent statutes. We pursue the history. The voice from Sinai having, in dreadful glory, proclaimed the conditions of this new covenant, directions are given for the solemn and public ratification of it. This was done that the obligation, which was originally, invariably, and necessarily binding upon the parties, might acquire additional force from voluntary consent, and from the intervention of august and significant ceremonies. I trust it will be neither unentertaining nor uninstructive to attend to the description of these ceremonies as they stand upon the sacred record. They are highly interesting, whether we consider them as the venerable remains of a very remote antiquity, being no less than three thousand three hundred and forty-three years prior to the present time;[*]A. D. 1792 or as the original compact in the constitution of an ancient, important, well-known, and generally interesting national government; or as forming part of the plan of a divine administration, whose force can never be spent, whose influence on human virtue and happiness can never expire.

God has “spoken once in his holiness,” in a sensible manner, has made himself seen, heard, and felt by a whole people together. But it is neither consistent with his dignity, nor favorable to man’s improvement, that he should always or often make himself known in that manner. He has spoken thus once, that every hearer might have a personal reason for acknowledging and adoring the dread Jehovah, the Fountain of all power, the supreme Author of every establishment. And he speaks thus but seldom, that all men may learn to revere conscience, his vicegerent upon earth, to study his word, the interpreter of his nature and will; and to respect, and “be subject to the powers which he ordained of God, not only for wrath, but for conscience’ sake.” Directions are accordingly given to ratify the covenant, not by the whole people in person, but by their representatives. The persons summoned to attend on this great occasion, are; first Moses himself, who was to represent the Mediator between the high contracting parties; then Aaron and his two sons, Nadab, and Abihu, who represented the Levitical body, or order of priesthood; and finally, seventy of the elders of Israel, who were to act in the name of the congregation at large. When we observe the names of Nadab and Abihu in this respectable list, and look forward to their dreadful and untimely end, we are led to a reflection of no small importance in studying the sacred volume; namely, that, the destination of Providence in raising particular persons to eminent, honorable, and important stations in civil society, is something extremely different from “the election according to grace.” A Cyrus and a Nebuchadnezzar may be the servants of God, to execute his vengeance or his love, without knowing any thing of their Employer; and their private and personal character may remain unaffected by their public conduct. The man according to God’s own heart, in the view of some great object of public utility, has sometimes been found dishonoring God by private vice, and degrading, destroying himself, while he has been materially serving the world. This most serious consideration dictated to the great apostle of the Gentiles that necessary rule of conduct. “I keep under my body and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast away.”[*]1Co 9:27 And it is a loud call to everyone who acts in a public capacity, to support and adorn it by private virtue and unaffected piety. While the great God was thus putting honor on these seventy-three persons in the eyes of all the people, he sees it necessary to put and to keep them in mind of their distance and dependence; “Worship ye afar off: Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but they shall not come nigh.” This message being reported to the people, they express their cheerful and unanimous consent. “All the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said will we do.”[*]Exo 24:3 Moses upon this reduces into writing the articles of the treaty between God and the people, to be recited aloud in the hearing of all the parties concerned, previous to the solemnities of the ensuing ratification. According to the form observed upon such occasions, rising up early in the morning, he builds an altar under the hill, the emblem of the divine presence, on the one side; “and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel,”[*]Exo 24:4 or an heap consisting of twelve large stones, according to the number of the tribes, to represent the people, on the opposite side; and upon it offers a burnt-offering, a sacrifice made by fire unto the Lord. The application of theblood of the victim principally challenges our attention in the celebration of this awful rite. It was divided into two equal parts: one half was put into basins, and placed by the twelve pillars of stone; where in all probability were arranged the seventy elders, the representatives of every tribe standing by the pillar peculiar to their tribe, the other half was sprinkled upon the altar on the other side. Thus, that which constituted the life of the sacrifice was separated, and Moses, standing between the divided parts, and having some of the blood now denominated the blood of the covenant, or of the purifying victim, in his hands, rehearsed aloud the words of the covenant in the audience of the people who were represented by their elders, and then solemnly demanded whether they acceded to the conditions of it. The form of adjuration employed in such cases, as you heard in a former Lecture,[*]Lecture XIII now in the hands of many of you, was inexpressibly awful and tremendous. “As the body of this victim is cleft asunder, as the blood of this animal is poured out, so let my body be divided and my blood shed, if I prove unsteadfast and perfidious.” Under an engagement of this dreadful import, they consent to the conditions of the treaty, saying, “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.”[*]Exo 24:7 Whereupon Moses takes of the blood, and sprinkles it upon the people, in the persons of their representatives, as he had before sprinkled it upon the altar, expressing thereby God’s acceptance of their persons and services, and his engagement to fulfill all that the covenant promised on his part. Matters being thus adjusted, and peace established, the burnt sacrifice is succeeded by a peace-offering, and the parties, as friends, sit down to partake of a common repast. This is evidently the meaning of the expression in the end of Exo 24:11 : “Also they saw God, and did eat and drink,” that is, as in the presence of the most high God, at peace with him, and at peace among themselves, they did eat of the same bread and drank of the same cup. It would be easy, were it necessary to confirm this interpretation by quoting the practice of other nations in later times, undoubtedly borrowed from rites of God’s own institution. It would appear from the letter of the narration, that the scene of this sacred feast was a higher region of the mountain than that where the covenant was ratified. He builded the altar under the hill, and set up the pillars, as it is Exo 24:4; and when the solemnities of that inferior station were duly celebrated, the nation whom God had thus chosen is exalted to a superior rank, and admitted to a more intimate union with their Maker. “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God now shines, calling to the heavens from above, and to the earth, Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”[*]Psa 50:5 Purified by blood, the blood of the covenant, they are encouraged to mount higher and higher, to approach nearer and nearer; they are enabled, with enlightened eyes, to discern more clearly, and to look more steadfastly. Being sprinkled with blood, “then went up Moses and 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 a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.”[*]Exo 24:9-11 What a stream of splendid ideas here rushes in upon us! “They saw the God of Israel.” They saw Him whose presence is the glory of heaven, the light of whose countenance is the joy of angels and archangels; they saw him descended to earth, to be the light, glory, and joy of his people, to dwell among them, and to be their friend, their father, and their God; they saw Him engaging himself by everything that could affect the senses, kindle the imagination, or melt the heart, to guide and protect them, to provide for them, to bless them, and to do them good. “They saw the God of Israel,” their father’s God, their own covenant God, and the God of their seed to the latest generations. They saw God! but what did they see? That face whose luster constrains the cherubim to cover their faces with their wings--those eyes, which “as a flame of fire to go up and down through the earth,” which discern impurity in the heavens and folly in angels--that mouth which spake the universe into existence, and whose lightest word shakes the foundations of the everlasting hills--the hand that wields the thunder, or the feet that walk upon the swift wings of the wind? No; the nobles of Israel had shrunk into nothing before such an awful display of Deity. He needed not to have laid his hand upon them; one glance of those piercing eyes which guard the law, had been sufficient to consume them in a moment. What then did they see? What was under his feet; and even that, something which could not be represented, expressed, or described; “as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.”[*]Exo 24:10 Like Paul caught up into the third heaven, but incapable to tell whether in the body or out of the body: caught-up into paradise, and listening to the conversation of its blest inhabitants, but what he heard were words unspeakable, “which it is not lawful for man to utter.”[*]2Co 12:4 Was it needful to caution such men and such a people against idolatry? What similitude could they employ, who, though they enjoyed the fullest and most satisfying demonstration of Jehovah’s presence, felt their understanding confined, their imagination checked, their senses confounded. They are lost in a splendor which at once attracted and repelled; which was only the foundation and external vail where glory resided, the pavement not the ceiling, the habitation not the inhabitant; a splendor resembling the transparency of the gem, which seems to transmit the light, and the solidity of the gem, which no force can penetrate. Is it too fanciful to suppose, that there is singular beauty in the color of the jewel here specified by the sacred penman, who was an eye-witness of this glorious appearance, and who attempts to convey an idea of what he saw? “Paved work of a sapphire-stone,” the happy medium between the fair and dazzling luster of the diamond, and the dim, familiar complexion of the emerald: not the fiery glare of the empyrean, nor the sober verdure of the earth; but the pellucid azure of the crystal sky, which equally corrects and tempers the dazzling power of the noontide sun, and the oppressive gloom of the midnight hour; which possesses light enough to discover the object without distressing the organ, and shade sufficient to relieve without sinking into obscurity! Not overwhelmed, but cheered and elevated by this moderated display of the divine glory; having seen God and yet living; feeling his hand upon them yet uncrushed by its weight; the nobles of the children of Israel conclude the service of this eventful day by the banquet of peace and love. They must now return to secular employments, and descend from the mountain; but Moses has yet farther manifestations of the will of God to receive, and is commanded to ascend still higher. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written: that thou mayest teach them.”[*]Exo 24:12 Be our attainments what they will, who is he that “hath attained, or is already perfect?” Our arrival at one eminence is only to see from its summit another, and thence another still rising above us: but in moral and intellectual pursuits, this is a disappointment that mortifies not, an exercise that fatigues not: the joy of heaven is to make progress in the contemplation and discovery of perfection that knows no limit, knows no end. From this higher elevation, Moses is informed that he is to receive the same law in a different form: “I will give thee tables of stone, and a law and commandments which I have written: that thou mayest teach them.”[*]Exo 24:12 As he arises towards heaven, the dispensation of which he was the minister becomes more and more plain and palpable. A matter of such deep importance must not be trusted to the vague and varying traditions of fallible and changing men, but collected into a record that can defy the lapse of time, and preserve unchanging truth and dignity amidst the revolutions of empire and the wreck of nations. This was graciously intended to prevent the necessity of a frequent interposition of Deity, which must at length have diminished its impression by commonness and familiarity. What God, therefore, at first, with his creative finger, curiously engraved on the heart of man, he audibly pronounced amidst the awful glories of Sinai, and afterwards committed to writing on tables of stone for perpetual preservation. And happy it is for man, that he has not been left, for moral and religious instruction, to the traditions of men, who are ever changing and inconsistent with themselves, or to the flimsy, imperfect, contradictory systems of philosophy and science, falsely so called; but that he is brought to the law and to the testimony, to Moses and the prophets, to the Savior himself and his apostles, to a Bible and a Sabbath. Happy it is that everyone is furnished with one and the same light to his feet, and lamp to his paths, and that all are taught of God from the least to the greatest. But indeed the care of Providence, in preserving this precious record, and transmitting it to us unaltered, unimpaired, is a perpetual miracle, a series of revelations, which we are bound to acknowledge with wonder, and to improve with gratitude. In the next ascent into the mount, Moses is accompanied, a certain length at least, and no doubt by divine appointment, by Joshua, his minister, on whom God began to put honor thus early, in order to exalt him in the eyes of the people whom he was destined one day to command, and to prepare him betimes for the wise and faithful discharge of his high office, by communion with God. As this absence of Moses, from the weighty duties of his charge, was to be of longer continuance than usual, the management of civil affairs, and the administration of justice were committed in the mean time to Aaron and Hur, his companions and coadjutors on the mount, when, by the lifting and holding up of his hands, Amalek was smitten before Israel. Was ever spot of this earthly ball so highly honored as that barren mountain in the midst of the desert? Persons, not places, possess dignity. The presence of God confers greatness and importance; He can receive none from created, much less from artificial pomp and magnificence. The great God “dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” “The heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him;” but “Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place; with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”[*]Isa 57:15 The curiosity of travellers has been excited to visit this scene of wonders. But is there not an intentional obscurity spread over the description, to baffle idle curiosity, and to call us to the spirit and intention of the dispensation, not the external apparatus of it? Wherever there is this book; wherever there is a principle of conscience; wherever there is common reason and understanding, there is the law, there is Sinai, there is God. It is not to make a pilgrimage to the holy sepulcher, to stand on Calvary, to drive infidels by force of arms out of Jewry, that constitute the faith and piety of the gospel; but to know Christ Jesus, and him crucified, in “the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.”[*]Php 3:10 The appearance of God’s presence and providence vary their aspect, according to the distance at which they are contemplated, and the medium through which we view them. What to the nobles in the mount appeared “as it were a paved work of a sapphire-stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness,”[*]Exo 24:10 to the multitude in the plain wore a more threatening and terrible appearance. “The sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire, on the top of the mount, in the eyes of the children of Israel.”[*]Exo 24:17 Fire at once consumes and refines, leaves to the pure gold all its solidity and value, and lays hold only of the dross. Moses undismayed, because following the command of God, advances into the midst of consuming fire; and so far is nature from being overpowered and destroyed by this keen, piercing element, that it is rather cherished and strengthened by it. Flame supplies the place of food; instead of perishing in a moment, at the end of forty days, without any other means of subsistence, we see the prophet descend in additional glory and renovated vigor; for all creatures are, and do that which their Creator wills. The next seven chapters contain a minute description of that sacred structure and its service, which God intended should be “the shadow of good things to come;” of which every iota and tittle was of divine contrivance and appointment, and undoubtedly had a meaning and significancy which we cannot in every particular find out to perfection. The pattern of it was showed unto Moses in the mount, and particular directions were given for its construction; in these were employed the forty days mentioned in the close of this chapter; when the history suddenly breaks off to exhibit a scene of a very different nature, which, if God permit, will form the subject of the next Lecture; namely, the unprovoked revolt of Israel to idolatry, the fabrication of the golden calf, and the hasty descent of Moses, to stem that dreadful torrent of guilt and wrath which had begun to flow. In the ratification of the covenant between God and Israel, we see the stress that was laid upon blood. The blood of the innocent victim must be poured out, and the altar must be sprinkled with blood. The elders of the people must be purified with blood. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission, no friendship, no peace, no access: life must be paid to redeem life. Blood in the sacrifice is the one thing needful, the one thing significant: blood in religious offices is all in all. Blood applied to any other purpose, is contaminating, unhallowed; unwholesome for food, polluting not purifying to the flesh, is a source of corruption and death, not of health and life. The idea of blood, in one view or the other, runs through the whole history of redemption. It occurs not more frequently in the Old Testament than in the New. One great sacrifice has indeed put an end for ever to the future effusion of blood; but it is still symbolically held out as the medium of reconciliation and access to God. “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.”[*]Eph 1:7 We are redeemed, “not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”[*]1Pe 1:18-19 “We draw nigh to God through the blood of his Son.” When we approach to ratify everyone his personal covenant with God at the communion table, we commemorate the death of Christ in the symbols of his body broken, and his blood shed. “This is the blood of the covenant,” said Moses, “which the Lord hath made with you,” and “This is the New Testament in my blood,” saith Christ, “shed for the remission of sins.” When we look toward eternal rest, the holy city, the Jerusalem that in above, the new and living way which leads thither, which conducts into the holiest of all, is through the rent veil of the Redeemer’s flesh. “His blood be upon us and on our children,” exclaimed the Jews, while they were crucifying the Lord of glory. Dreadful imprecation!

O Lord, require not our blood of our own hand, nor of every man at the hand of his brother, O Lord, let this man’s blood be upon us and upon our children, not as an oppressive load, as it was on those who with wicked hands impiously shed it, but as an atonement for our sins, as a sacrifice of a sweet smelling savour, acceptable unto God; that “being justified by faith, we may have peace with God, throughout Lord Jesus Christ. By whom also we may. have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Amen. Amen.