Eating with God on Pavement of Sky Text: Exodus 24:9-11
Introduction: The God Who Comes Near
We live in an age that has forgotten what it means to fear God, and because we have forgotten how to fear Him, we have also forgotten what a staggering privilege it is to draw near to Him. Our modern sensibilities, soaked as they are in a saccharine sentimentality, tend to domesticate the Almighty. We want a God who is a celestial therapist, a divine affirmation machine, a kindly grandfather who pats us on the head regardless of our insolence. But this is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is a consuming fire.
Throughout the early chapters of Exodus, God has been revealing His power in earth-shattering ways. He has humbled the gods of Egypt, drowned the most powerful army on earth in the Red Sea, and descended upon Mount Sinai in smoke and fire, with thunder and lightning, causing the entire mountain to quake violently. The people were so terrified that they begged Moses to be their mediator, lest they hear the voice of God directly and die. This is the proper and sane reaction for sinful creatures in the presence of unmitigated holiness. To see God is to die. This is a fixed principle in a fallen world.
And yet, in our text today, we find one of the most astonishing scenes in all of Scripture. After the covenant has been formally ratified with blood, a select group of representatives from Israel are called up the mountain, not to be consumed, but to commune. They are invited into the very throne room of the universe for a covenant meal. This is not a tame event. It is a terrifying, glorious, and gracious exception to the rule. It is a preview of the gospel. It is a demonstration that the entire point of redemption, the entire goal of the covenant, is fellowship with God. God did not save Israel from Egypt so they could wander in the wilderness; He saved them so they could feast with Him.
This passage is a direct assault on two opposing errors. First, it demolishes the cold, deistic notion of a distant God who winds up the clock and lets it run. Here, God is intimately and personally present with His people. Second, it demolishes the pagan, pantheistic notion that God is simply part of the creation. The God of Israel is utterly transcendent, enthroned above the heavens, and yet He condescends to meet with men. What we have here is a theophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of God the Son, who has always been the mediator between the unapproachable Father and sinful man.
The Text
Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel,
and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself.
Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they beheld God, and they ate and drank.
(Exodus 24:9-11 LSB)
The Covenant Representatives (v. 9)
We begin with the procession up the mountain.
"Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel," (Exodus 24:9)
This is not an open invitation. The entire nation has just sworn an oath to obey the covenant, but access to God's immediate presence is restricted. It is granted to the appointed federal heads of the people. We have Moses, the chief mediator. We have Aaron, the high priest, along with his two oldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, who are in line for the priesthood. And we have seventy elders, who represent the twelve tribes of Israel in their governmental capacity. This is a representative government, going up the mountain to represent all the people before God.
This principle of representation is woven into the fabric of reality because it is woven into the fabric of God's dealings with mankind. God deals with us through heads, through representatives. He dealt with all humanity through Adam, and we all fell in him. And He deals with His redeemed people through the last Adam, Jesus Christ, and we are all saved in Him. These seventy-four men go up the mountain as the heads of the nation, and their experience there is reckoned to the whole nation.
And we must not miss the tragic foreshadowing here with Nadab and Abihu. Here they are, granted this unbelievable privilege. They see the God of Israel. They eat and drink in His presence and are not consumed. They are at the pinnacle of spiritual experience. And yet, just a few chapters later, in Leviticus 10, these are the very two men who will offer "strange fire" before the Lord and be consumed by fire from His presence. This is a stark warning. Proximity to God, religious experience, and high office are no guarantee of a faithful heart. You can see God on the mountain on Monday and be devoured for irreverence on Tuesday. Privilege does not equal piety. The nearness of God is a dangerous place for the profane.
The Vision of God (v. 10)
What these men experience next is beyond our ability to fully comprehend, but Scripture gives us a glimpse.
"and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself." (Exodus 24:10 LSB)
Let us be clear. John 1:18 tells us that "no one has seen God at any time." Jesus Himself says in John 6:46, "Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father." Theologians refer to this as the invisibility of the divine essence. The infinite, triune God in His pure being is invisible to finite, created eyes. So what did they see? They saw a manifestation of God. They saw the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son, veiled in a form they could withstand. This is the Angel of the Lord, the Commander of the Army of Yahweh, the one who has always been the visible face of the invisible God.
The description is not of His face, but of what is under His feet. This is a common feature in theophanies. Ezekiel, in his vision of God's throne, sees something similar: "Now over the heads of the living beings there was something like an expanse, like the awesome gleam of crystal, spread out over their heads" (Ezekiel 1:22). What is under God's feet is more glorious than anything we can imagine on earth. They see a pavement of sapphire, a deep, royal blue, but it is not opaque. It is as clear as the sky on a perfect day. He is enthroned above the very heavens. The sky is His footstool. He is utterly transcendent, separate from and sovereign over all creation.
This vision is a direct polemic against the idolatry that Israel was so prone to. They are not to make any graven images, because no image could capture this. How do you carve a pavement of clear sky? How do you fashion a God whose glory is such that you can only describe the floor of His throne room? This vision is meant to instill awe and to guard against the cheap, man-made substitutes they would be tempted to fashion down in the valley.
The Covenant Meal (v. 11)
The climax of this encounter is an act of radical, unmerited grace.
"Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they beheld God, and they ate and drank." (Exodus 24:11 LSB)
The text explicitly notes what should have happened. Based on everything they knew about God's holiness and their own sinfulness, they should have been struck dead. God "did not stretch out His hand" against them. The expected outcome of this meeting was judgment, but the actual outcome was fellowship. Why? Because the covenant had just been cut. The blood of the oxen had been sprinkled on the altar and on the people (Exodus 24:6-8). They were standing there under the protection of substitutionary atonement. The blood had been shed, death had been paid, and so they were free to approach God and live.
And what do they do in His presence? "They beheld God, and they ate and drank." This is the pinnacle of covenant relationship. To eat and drink with someone in the ancient world was a sign of peace, acceptance, and fellowship. This was a ratification meal. God was hosting His covenant vassals in His royal court to celebrate the treaty He had just made with them. He did not bring them up the mountain to give them another lecture. He brought them up for a feast. The goal of all God's laws and judgments and sacrifices is this: table fellowship with His people.
The Gospel on the Mountain
This entire scene is a beautiful photograph of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We, like the Israelites, are sinful and cannot approach a holy God. We stand at the bottom of the mountain, terrified and undone. By all rights, God should stretch out His hand against us in judgment.
But God, in His mercy, has provided a mediator. Not Moses, but one greater than Moses, His own Son, Jesus Christ. He has provided a sacrifice. Not the blood of bulls and goats, but the precious blood of Christ Himself, the blood of the new covenant. And through faith in this mediator and this sacrifice, we are not destroyed by the presence of God, but are invited into it.
The writer to the Hebrews makes this exact point. "For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind... But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant" (Hebrews 12:18, 22-24).
Because of Jesus, we have a better invitation than Moses and the elders. They went up a physical mountain; we have come to the heavenly Mount Zion. They saw a veiled, pre-incarnate Christ; we have seen the glory of God in the face of the incarnate Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). They ate a covenant meal in His presence; we are invited to the Lord's Table, where we eat and drink with Him by faith every Lord's Day. The Lord's Supper is our Exodus 24. It is where we, the nobles of the new covenant, come into the presence of God, under the protection of the blood of Christ, and are not consumed. Instead, we behold God, and we eat and drink.
This is what all of history is driving toward. Not just a meal on a mountain, but the great Marriage Supper of the Lamb, where all the redeemed from every tribe and tongue and nation will sit down and feast with their God forever. There, we will see Him, not through a veil, but face to face. And the pavement under His feet will not just be like the sky, for the new heavens and the new earth will be His eternal throne room, and we will feast with Him in resurrected glory, world without end. Amen.