The Covenant Confirmed | Exodus 24:3-8 & Hebrews 9:11-22 | The Sure Hope of Salvation in Christ's Blood

When Israel stood at Sinai, they didn’t just hear God’s covenant—they embraced it, and it was sealed with blood. In this message, Pastor Mark shows how that moment points us to something greater: the covenant fulfilled through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Just as Moses confirmed the covenant with sacrifice, Christ has confirmed and completed the covenant with His own precious blood. In Him, our salvation is sure and secure.

📖 Watch the full sermon below and be reminded that your salvation rests not on your strength, but on the finished work of Christ.

Looking to reflect further? Read five days of devotions based on this sermon.

📖 Click to Show the Transcript of this Sermon

Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week, we dig into God's word, trusting that the Holy spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us. There's something very substantial and significant about signing your name. I'm talking like on a contract or something. When you go to do that part of the process, it is very real because you're putting your name on the line. Because you can talk about commitments, you can make plans, you can even have a handshake agreement. But once your name goes down on that line in ink, there's no going back. It's official. You have to keep the terms of the agreement. Now, I remember when we were searching for a new denominational home a few years back, one of the things that I kept coming back to during the process was the importance of confessional subscription. Not just saying that we like our confessions and catechism, but that we actually believe them and agree not to teach anything contrary to them. That commitment matters not only for pastors, but for elders as well. I believe that intellectually. I had even signed my name to a book once before, back when I was ordained in the RCA.

But that signature, when I signed it that day, it would have been January 23, my birthday, that's why I remember, January 23, back in 2016. It didn't hold the same weight. Well, why? Because formal subscription wasn't required. Nothing was required me in that signature. You only needed to believe and hold to the spirit of the confessions and catechism, whatever that means. But when I passed my exams and stood before the Rivers of the Lakes Presbyterian of the EPC back in April of 2023, I signed my name again. And this time, I knew I was binding myself to what I had just said I believed. It wasn't just about joining a new group, being in a new pastor's club. It was about publicly, covenantally saying, I believe this. I'm bound to it. I'm not going back. By signing my name, I was saying, Here I stand. That moment has stuck with me. I tell you that story because it gives us a window into what's happening in our passage from with us today. There in Exodus 24, the people of God hear the words of the covenant, and they respond. But it doesn't end there. The covenant is sealed.

It's confirmed with blood. It's a signature at the bottom of the page. A binding act of commitment. What we'll see as we walk through this passage is that God confirms his covenant with his people through his word, through blood, and ultimately through a better mediator who would come and would fulfill the covenant fully on behalf of the people. To understand the weight of what's happening here in Exodus 24, we need to remember where we're at in the story of God's people here. He has delivered them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. He brought the people through the Red Sea on dry land. He provided manna for them in the wilderness. Their thirsty mouths drank water that came out of a rock. He guided them by a cloud during the day in a pillar of fire. By night, he brought them to Mount Sinai. At the foot of this mountain, he spoke His law, His covenant words. He spoke them directly to the people in thunder and smoke. The Ten Commandments were given in Exodus 20, followed by a series of laws and instructions through chapters 21 through 24 that showed how God's Holiness shapes the life and the worship of his covenant people.

Now, as we are here in Exodus 24, we're seeing a covenant ceremony. This is where everything gets confirmed. The people have heard God's word, and now it's time to respond. The covenant is not just heard, it's embraced. It's here that we see the covenant not just declared, we see that it is sealed. The first thing that we see today as we work through the text that we have before us is that the word was received with obedience. As I said, a lot has happened up to this point. It's arguably the most action-packed section of scripture. Think about the beginning of Exodus. But we've seen more than just action. We've seen grace. Again and again, the people of Israel have been utterly dependent upon God. Pharrell refused to let them go, but through the blood on the doorpost at Passover, God showed his power to redeem. At the Red Sea, they were trapped. There was water in front, mountains on the sides, one of the most powerful armies in the world behind them. But God made a way. In the wilderness, there was no food. What did God do? He rained down manna. No water to drink?

He brought life-sustaining water from a rock. Every act of deliverance was an act of mercy. It was all from God. It was all of grace. As I was reviewing this this morning, sitting here, looking at what I was planting out, I realized how much more it is of grace. I had never thought about before that manna came from heaven. From heaven, food from heaven. Where does food come from? From the earth. God could have grown wheat, but he showed how it was all from him by having it come from the sky. Then water, where does water come from? He could have told the people, Grab your buckets, it's going to rain. But water came from a rock. Think about that. They were utterly dependent upon God. The grace that he showed them was all from him. There would be no sense that somehow they had any part of it. It was from God. He was doing the impossible. When we come to this moment here at Mount Sinai, the people aren't just hearing random rules from a distant deity somewhere out there in the Ether. They are hearing the gracious words of the God who has rescued them over and over.

The word of the covenant isn't dropped into a vacuum, and then they're told to obey. It comes after salvation. It comes after redemption. It comes from the one the one who delivered them, the one who fed them, the one who guided them, the one who preserved them. How do the people respond? Verse 3 tells us that all the words that the Lord has spoken, they say they will do. This word was received with obedience. They had seen enough of God's power and enough of God's mercy to know that his commands weren't burdensome. This wasn't submission because God was demanding obedience. It a covenantal response. They understood, at least in this moment, that the God who saves also speaks, and that hearing his word calls for a response of loyalty and obedience for his steadfast love and his faithfulness. And notice in the text the deliberate way that this is told to us, the people answer with one voice. Now, imagining this moment, we might read this and hear all the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do it. When we imagine everybody saying the same thing, that's how we imagine it. But that's not what the text is trying to convey to us here.

It's not rote repetition. It's cluing us in to how they understand what's going on. They're not filled with fear that they will be crushed for disobedience. They are responding because the God of mercy has shown them his But the story here doesn't stop with their verbal response. So I want to take you back to that presbytery meeting where I signed my name when I was ordained in the EPC. They didn't just take my word that I was going to only teach what was in line with the Westminster Confession Standard or the Westminster Standards. They made me sign my name. They made me prove it. If it was just verbal, what record would there be? I don't think there was a live stream. I don't think anyone was catching my statement on their phone, videoing it to prove it. It would have been my word against theirs. I willingly wrote my name in the book to confirm my affirmation of the confession. In Exodus 24, God doesn't leave the covenant resting only on their words. This is a covenant ceremony, and so there is something tangible, something visible, and something serious that confirms what's happening. As we've seen many times in our journey in the Bible together, covenants are confirmed with blood.

This wasn't just drawing out a few drops. What happened here was a complete bleeding out. It was letting us know that death had happened. There is seriousness here to what is happening. We get this idea as we move deeper into the text and look at verse 4. We see, first off, that Moses writes it down. This conveys to us that this isn't just an emotional moment. It isn't just a verbal agreement. It's formalized. Then he builds an altar. This isn't just a decoration. He builds an altar because a sacrifice is going to happen there. The people won't just hear the word. They won't just hear that their sins are forgiven. They'll see and even feel the seriousness of the covenant that they're entering into because blood is shed. The lives of the oxen are laid down for the people. And as we move to verse 6, the language becomes even more vivid. And in our 21st century minds, we generally assume cleanliness, stuff being sanitary. Our minds see the animal on clean rocks, and it's just laying there like it's sleeping. But what is happening here, how we should imagine this, is anything but clean and sanitary.

The altar is the place where God meets man, and it's drenched in blood. This is a holy act. It tells us something sobering and essential. A covenant with a Holy God cannot be made without blood. That's not just a ritual formality, it's a theological necessity. The wages of sin is death. For sinful people to be bound in a covenant to a Holy God, something must die in their place. If you were alarmed at the idea of blood being thrown at the altar, You were probably disturbed by what happens after the people reaffirm their obedience in verse seven. And once again, our modern sensibilities cringe at what's happening here. If we were involved in this, we would run to the nearest shower and scrub ourselves from head to toe. But once again, this is important for our understanding of how God brings salvation to his people. What Moses did here wasn't just a symbol. This was literal, and it was God's way of saying, You are bound by blood to me, and I am bound to you by grace. The blood of sacrifice covers your sins, and it confirms my covenantal relationship with you. This This is a very heavy moment, and it's supposed to be.

But what's more important is that this event points us to something far greater. We read about that in Hebrews 9, because when we finished that passage this morning, we read that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. This whole moment, dramatic and sacred as it was there in Exodus 24, was never the final word. It pointed forward to a better covenant, one sealed not with the blood of animals, but with the blood of the spotless Lamb of God, God the Son, who would suffer and die in our very own flesh. This is where the rubber meets the road. We understand why the idea of covenant in this passage mattered for us in the 21st century. The The world might see this, what we read in Exodus 24, as some primitive bloody ritual from a time far removed from ours. The truth is that a story of blood being splattered on people a few thousand years ago does mean something very substantial for us. It isn't a passing, insignificant thing. That moment in history was never meant to be an ends unto itself. We often think that the old covenant system was good, but people kept on messing it up.

So that just didn't work. So God's going to send Jesus to fix it. We needed a plan B. The old covenant system was great, but didn't work. So God sent in plan B. But that's not the case at all. The New Testament makes that infinitely clear to us. The old covenant not only showed our inability to be perfectly holy, but it also pointed us forward to the salvation that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. This covenant was confirmed by blood, but it was anticipating a better covenant with a better mediator. In Exodus, the mediator, the one who went between God and man is Moses. God speaks to the people through him. Moses and the priests are the ones who offer the sacrifices for the people. But Moses is a fallen, sinful creature. As great as Moses is, he fails. In fact, his disobedience causes him to not be allowed to enter the promised land. The one who brought the word of God of the covenant to the people, the one who offered the sacrifices, the one who sprinkled the blood. What he couldn't do was cleanse the hearts of the people. He couldn't remove their guilt.

He could not guarantee their eternal inheritance. But what Moses could not do, Jesus did. And this is made clear for us in the of Hebrews, Moses and the priests went into God's presence in an earthly tent. They went into the tabernacle in the temple. But Jesus went into the presence of God in the highest heavens. The priests offered the blood of bulls and goats, but Jesus, in our flesh, offered his own precious blood. The blood that flowed at the cross was not symbolic. It was sufficient. Sufficient to bring salvation once and for all. Did that to confirm the covenant and to fulfill it, to give you hope of salvation because your sins are remembered no more. As I said prior to our call to worship, the past week has been a heavy one. We see again and again how violent and broken the world is. The assassination of Charlie Kirk, school shootings a few weeks back. Part of all of this that alarms me the most is how calloused we seem to have come to the violence that we see in our world. You hear of a school shooting and you almost expect it. The world is broken.

The sin of the world is not something distant from us. It is near to us every day. Sin is not an ancient problem that we need to put oxen on an altar for and splatter blood over the altar. Sin is a now problem. And we see it not only in our own hearts, but we see it in the world. The bitter reality is that we live in a fallen world, and now we have access to news and to social media that not only shows us what happens, but it exposes the darkness in the human heart. And we grieve, and we lament, and we long for justice. We pray that God would set all things to right and cry within us that prayer, 'Come, Lord Jesus. ' And in times where we feel this weight, this idea of covenant. These words that we find in Exodus 24, in Hebrew 9, they speak prophetically into our lives. Because the covenant that is promised points us to the blood that was shed in love for us. Human sin takes life, but Christ in his mercy gave his life that we might have confidence in salvation. His blood brings hope in the deepest of despairs because it's what secures redemption.

When the world is shaking, the promise of God is secure. You have salvation through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This covenant cannot be broken because Jesus has won the victory, and he is eternally on his throne, and he is there working for you. The covenant has been fulfilled, and that promise will never be broken. You can have peace and hope and joy. This is the foundation on which we stand. It's why we have hope in the midst of anything that takes place, whether it's in the greater world, whether it's stuff in our community, whether it's something in your personal life. Your salvation is confirmed and guaranteed, not because of an ancient ritual on a mountain in the Middle East many years ago. Your salvation is sure and certain because Jesus suffered and died to pay for your rebellion against a Holy God. On that mountain where the cross was, that secures your salvation. Because Jesus suffered and died to pay for your rebellion against a Holy God. Because you have been united now to him in his life, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. You can have certainty of the covenant promise that God has made with his people to give them eternal life.

The people who stood in front of that altar and saw the blood of the oxen splattered on the altar, they're not just the people of God. You, Christian, are the covenant people of God. You are in covenant with God. As sure as the sun rose this morning, even more sure than that, because of the blood of Christ, you have salvation when you are united to him by faith. This is good news because it means that our salvation is not resting on our strength, it's not resting on our ability. Just as in the story we looked at last week with Abraham and the haves of the animals, the burden of the covenant doesn't rest on us. Because let's be honest, each and every day, we fail to love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We fail to love our neighbor as ourselves. If the burden of the covenant was on us, we would fall flat on our faces and we would be left with nothing but despair. But Jesus came and did what we can't do. He has obeyed perfectly. He suffered and bled for his people. He rose victoriously, and now gloriously, he reigns at the Father's right-hand as our mediator and our King.

The blood of Jesus speaks a better word than we could ever speak. So you don't have to fear that God will abandon his covenant. He confirmed it at the cross. If you are in Christ, then you are sprinkled clean, not with oxen's blood, but with the precious blood of the Lamb. Now, just like Israel, we're called to respond. Not a response of fear, not a response of fear, Not a promise to try harder. The response we're called to is grateful obedience. You're called to say, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do. Not because we're trying to earn God's favor, not because we think we need to make God love us, but because we know the blessing of his steadfast love and faithfulness. And that covenant love has been poured out on us abundantly. And that's exactly what we remember. It's exactly what we proclaim as we come to the Lord's table this morning. Here before us is not the blood of bulls and goats, but a bread, a cup, pointing us to the true body and blood of Christ. This meal is the visible confirmation for us of the covenant of grace. Just as Israel was sprinkled with blood to be bound to God, so we are reminded here that Christ's blood has cleansed us and confirmed for us a new and better covenant.

So as you eat and as you drink, here again, the covenant promise. You, Christian, belong to Christ. Your sins are forgiven. An eternal life is yours, not signed in ink, not with oxen's blood, but with the precious blood of the Lamb of God. Amen. Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we praise you for what we see in your word. That a people far from you is brought close by your work. We know that we are incapable of doing this on our own. We know that we can't save ourselves. And so we are so grateful that your word shows us how you have come and reached down to us. And we pray, Lord, that as we serve you in this world, we would do so with confidence, knowing that our salvation is secure. Knowing that you hold on to us, knowing that you work through your word to make us holy and to spread your word, to spread it out to the ends of the earth. Give us a confidence in your grace and a confidence in your covenant love. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon.

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