THE MOSAIC COVENANT
Ex. 19:5, 6
This
is named for the person with which the Lord dealt in making the covenant. Moses is the representative of the people
before God. When God would speak to the
people, He would speak to the representative.
In verse 3 God called Moses and gave him direction. According to verse 3 it is clear that God
gave this covenant to the house of Jacob, the children of Israel. It was not given to
anyone else. It was a covenant of Laws,
Priests, and sacrifices all according to the word of God.
It
was a covenant of blood. In the
beginning God slew the animals to make skins to clothe Adam and Eve from their
nakedness. Of the first sons, Abel
brought his sacrifice of the lamb, and Cain brought his sacrifice of the fruit
of the land resulting from his labor.
God accepted Abel's bloody sacrifice and rejected Cain's non-bloody
sacrifice. When Noah was come out of the
ark following the great flood, he built an altar and sacrificed (shed the blood
of an animal) unto the Lord. The pattern
then was the head of the household doing the sacrifice, and the sacrifice was
shedding the blood of an animal. Then
came Abraham. It is still the head of
the household doing the sacrifice, but Abraham was called on to offer his son
on the altar as a burnt offering to God.
In obedience to God He was about to do it when God called out of heaven
and appointed to him a ram which he was permitted to offer in the stead of
Isaac. All this was leading up to this
Mosaic Covenant when God sealed His covenant with blood. Exo_24:8 And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the
covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.
In
establishing this covenant God promised the Jewish people that if they would
keep this covenant He would consider them a peculiar treasure of His, above all
people Ex. 19:5. He also promised to
make them a kingdom of priests and an holy nation. This is not a covenant of salvation. It is rather a covenant of earthly
relationship between God and the nation of Israel
which is hereby established. It does set
Israel apart as
being more precious to God than any other nation. In this God gave them the Law that is the 10
commandments, the statutes, and the judgments by which they were to be
governed.
As Moses spelled out all the
stipulations of this covenant, he included all the details of the
priesthood. It would be a human
priesthood that would offer all the sacrifices for the people of Israel. Note just one example. Once a year, on the day of Atonement, the priest, which had to be of the tribe of
Levi, must first offer a prescribed offering to make atonement for
himself. Then before all the people he
must offer a goat on the great brazen altar and then sprinkle its blood on the
furniture in the divinely designed Tabernacle to make atonement for the
Tabernacle. After that the same priest
would take another goat, and again before the people, he would lay his hand on
the goat's head and confess the sins of Israel
signifying in type the transferring of all their sins which he had just
confessed, then that goat would be taken out to a wilderness and let go. This was in type teaching us of our Lord's
sacrificial death and His taking away the sins of the world.
There were also numerous sacrifices
for different reasons which the priests would offer. All that has been shown before was a part of
that Mosaic Covenant, and it all was a type of the Savior Who would come, even
Jesus Christ. This did not make void the
Abrahamic Covenant. Rather it
established it and made a way to govern the people.
What think ye? Your comment will be welcome.
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