Knowing God through His Word … Day by Day

J. Ligon Duncan concludes a sermon on Exodus 24, “The Glory Blood of the Covenant”

Our Lord Jesus Himself connects and explains His saving work on the cross by using Moses’ words in Exodus 24:8.  When Moses confirms that God has brought His people into a saving, covenant relationship, in Exodus 24:8, he says, “Behold,” as he sprinkles this blood on the people, “this is the blood of the covenant. This is the blood that seals the covenant.  This is the blood that shows that you have been brought into covenant relationship with God.  This is the blood that spares your judgment.  This is the blood that unites you with the family of God.  And on the night that Jesus was betrayed, on the night in which He stood in that upper room and the account of it is recorded in every one of the gospels and in John, Jesus lifts up the cup to explain what He is about to do for the disciples the next day.  He uses this phrase, this language from Exodus 24, and He says, “Behold, this is the blood of the covenant.”  No, He doesn’t!  He says, “Behold, My blood of the covenant.” Jesus is saying that it is “My blood which is going to seal this covenant.”

You see, the author of Hebrews, in Hebrews 10:4, explains to you that “the blood of bulls and goats cannot forgive sin and cannot cleanse the conscience.”  And Jesus is looking to His disciples, He’s looking into their eyes, and He knows that they know this passage, and He knows that they know the significance of that blood bringing the people of God into fellowship with God Himself, and He’s saying, “My friends, that blood couldn’t bring you into fellowship with God, but My blood can and will. Behold, My blood of the covenant.”  And He adds in Mark, “which is shed for the forgiveness of your  sins.”  You can’t worship God without that Mediator.  There is no way into fellowship with the God who rules over heaven and earth, but by the name and merits and blood of Jesus Christ.

Franklin Graham is exactly right.  “That Name is all we’ve got.”  That’s the one thing we’ve got.  We’ve got one Mediator, and His blood, and His blood alone, brings us into fellowship with the living God.  He fulfills this blood of the covenant, that we might worship and meet and commune and fellowship and put our knees under the table of God forever.  Hallelujah, what a Savior.  Let’s pray.

O Lord, we cannot do justice to the awesomeness of what You displayed at Sinai but which You completely transcended at Golgotha.  But we want to apprehend it and we want to glory in it, and we want to bathe in it, and we want to be strengthened in it, and we want to be changed by it, and we want to praise You for it.  So grant us some inkling of a comprehension of the greatness, the height and depth and breadth of the love of God which is in Christ Jesus’ blood of the covenant.  This we ask in Jesus name, Amen.