The Covenant

Now can we understand the meaning of the Tabernacle? We see in the beginning of chapter 24 that God called Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and 70 Elders to come before Him, but that they stood afar off while Moses alone went up the Mount. What God revealed to him, he then came and told them. The response of the people was, “All the words which the Lord hath said will we do” (verse 3). After that the details were given.

Those who are not prepared to obey the Lord can never understand what the Lord is saying. Only those who are prepared to obey what God reveals to them can be effectively instructed. We know very well how to acquire a knowledge of the Bible, but do we carry out in practice what God tells us? There is plenty of Bible knowledge, but people will not do the things that they learn, and light that is rejected becomes darkness. It is those who have knowledge, but who know nothing of the cost of experience, who become proud and haughty and puffed up. So, before we can go any further we must give God the promise: ‘O God, whatsoever Thou shalt teach us we will obey’. We should make it a principle that, whenever we open the Bible, we give God such a promise: ‘O God, what-soever Thou teachest me now, I promise Thee I will obey.’ If you are not prepared to obey, then God cannot force you nor compel you to obey, because in love there cannot be compulsion or force. God has revealed Himself, but He waits for those who will come forward and say: ‘Now we promise that we will obey what God says’.

God was about to make a very important covenant with the people (Exod. 24.4-8). In preparation for the covenant, Moses built an altar with twelve pillars, one pillar for each tribe. Upon the altar was laid the sacrifice, the blood of which was sprinkled upon the people. This teaches us that only those who come under the Blood of the Lord Jesus can understand what God is saying. Those who are not born again—those who know nothing of the sprinkling of the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus—can never understand fully what God is teaching here in the Tabernacle. It does not matter what is said, nor how well it is expounded, no one will really understand these things who has not been purchased and washed from his sins by the Blood of the everlasting covenant.

But for all who have been purchased and washed, these words are spoken. A man may be extremely illiterate in earthly things, but in Christ he can become extremely wise in heavenly things. This is the power in the Blood. It can make the most foolish man the wisest man. Our first step to the understanding of heavenly things is to be brought and kept under the Blood of the everlasting covenant. Have we said: ‘Yes Lord, we promise Thee that we will be obedient to all that thou shalt say to us?’

Why is it that so many people struggle very hard to obey God, but cannot? Every morning they say, ‘Now, to-day, I will not lose my temper; to-day I will not tell lies; to-day I will not take a bribe’; yet after two or three hours, again they lose their tempers. Even though they pray and read their Bibles, yet they fail. Why is that? Because they fail to appropriate the Blood for cleansing to begin with, and then to lay hold of Christ as their life. They are trying to do the things of God with their own human energy. That is why they fail. Do you want to overcome in every temptation? Then come under the Blood by faith, every day, every morning. The Blood speaks of two things—cleansing and life. When you confess your sins, you are washed by the Blood from every defilement and the life of Christ in you will be manifested in your daily walk and actions. The Israelites had to come under the Blood to be able to obey what God commanded.

And then it says of the elders that “they saw God” (Exod. 24.10). Yet John 1.18 says No man hath seen God at any time.” It goes on to say, however, “the only begotten, Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. We are to conclude that on the Mount, in that chapter in Exodus, they saw the Lord Jesus Christ. “No man hath seen God at any time.” That is definite. But then Moses took some blood in a basin. Some he sprinkled upon the people, and some on the altar. And then the elders began to see something. They saw the Lamb of God. First, they could only see animals being killed and their blood being sprinkled, but then, with the eyes of faith, they were seeing the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, being slain for them. In this figure of the slain offerings, they were seeing the Lord Jesus Christ suffering and dying for all sinners everywhere. “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1.29).