Now for Exodus 24: a hugely important and helpful – if puzzling – chapter. Because, if we can grasp it, this is really where the old testament starts. And this is where we start to learn how religion doesn’t work…
In Exodus 24 a remarkable thing happens; the all-important covenant is made between God and Israel. And what Israel says, unwisely, twice, is `Everything the Lord has said we will do… We will do everything the Lord has said` (vv3,7). Do we shudder slightly as we see their over-confidence in themselves? But God accepts this, and it becomes the basis for Israel’s whole relationship with Him, and shapes what happens throughout the old testament.
If we shudder, it’s because we know history proves that this promise can’t be kept. If doing everything God has said is the condition of our relationship with Him, we’re in deep trouble. (The Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on my door one saturday and told me that if I want paradise, all I have to do is keep God’s commands. That’s all: just, love the Lord with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind; and besides that, love my neighbour as much as I love myself; yes, that’s all I have to accomplish, if I want paradise. I told them it was the most depressing message I could imagine.) Israel’s self-confident promise is a promise we can never keep; indeed Israel didn’t even keep it for the 40 days Moses was away up the mountain.
Yes; with the easy wisdom of hindsight, we see the rashness, the utter improbability, of Israel’s deal with God. Yet – for our sake – God accepts it. What is He doing here?
God is arranging here for us to be taught an absolutely vital lesson, that religion cannot work – because, wholesome though God’s law is, we haven’t a hope of keeping it by our own strength; so we can only ever be saved by faith in, and union with, a Saviour who fulfils it for us. God took Israel seriously for the sake of the whole human race. Because `doing everything God wants by our own goodness and strength’ isn’t just Israel’s mistake, it’s the disastrous mistake of one world religion after another (and separates all other world religions from true Christianity): the idea that our good deeds can outweigh our bad deeds, and this should be decisive on judgment day (Islam); or that our good deeds can give us better karma (much eastern religion); or that if we are basically nice, don’t kick the dog and live a fairly decent life, then God will probably let us into heaven (nominal western religion).
All this fails utterly to match up to God’s enormous holiness as revealed at Sinai. And so here the old testament experiment begins where, through the history of this one special people, God demonstrates the futility of any religion where relationship with Him depends on what we do. Because we can’t make it work: in the end we all `fall short of the glory of God`, and so can never live in His glorious presence. Set against God’s colossal holiness (and nb Ex 24:15-17), in the end `all our righteous acts’- flawed as they are by our pride, self-righteousness, grudges, petulance etc – `are like filthy rags’ (Isaiah 64). So this chapter embodies an absolutely vital lesson: the religious way to God, centred on our own achievements, efforts or rituals, can never work, can only make us miserable & frustrated, and we need to be rescued from it. Miserable, because we’ll always know, deep down, that we’ve failed to keep the bargain; so it’s bound to lead to fear and (see Galatians 4) slavery, the slavery of trying to earn our own way to heaven – slavery from which God longs to set us joyfully free.
As we read this we grow ready for the wonder of the gospel: Jesus did it all totally for us –`It is finished`, He cried on the cross!; and so I have nothing left to do, I can freely have life in God’s presence forever – and my religious sadness and slavery can be turned into joy. (Exodus is about God setting slaves joyfully free!)
(I love telling people I’m not religious, because their surprise usually opens up a two-minute chance to share the difference between Jesus and mere human religion!)
And even in this Exodus chapter there’s a hint of the deepest truth, that Israel’s self-confident promise isn’t the whole story. Because the old testament covenant isn’t sealed here merely by stating its terms, but by Israel being sprinkled with blood, v8. It’s a hint that there will be another way, a far better way than religion. Christ’s blood has paid for all my sin, becoming `the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes` (Rom 10); and because the penalty is paid, the way into God’s glorious presence is (unlike in the end of Exodus 24) wide open for us all; the way via a joyous new birth which remakes us into beings who can thrive in His glory, and meanwhile gives us power to learn to live as He desires. But not earned, never earned; that slavery is over…
`Glad tidings of great joy for all people!`
