The Blood Of The Covenant

Questions This Sermon Answers:

1. What was the covenant ratification ceremony in Exodus 24?

Moses built an altar and twelve pillars at the foot of Sinai, offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, then took the blood and sprinkled half on the altar and half on the people while reading the Book of the Covenant. The ceremony sealed the covenant relationship between God and Israel in blood — both parties were marked by the same blood, signifying that the same fate would befall either party who broke the covenant. It is a solemn, bilateral commitment expressed through the most powerful symbol of life and death available: blood.

2. Why did ancient covenants require blood?

In the ancient Near East, covenants were often ratified by cutting animals in half and walking between the pieces — parties essentially saying "may I be like this animal if I break this covenant" (Genesis 15:17 shows God doing this with Abraham). Blood represented life: "the life of the flesh is in the blood" (Leviticus 17:11). To seal a covenant in blood was to stake one's life on the promise. The blood at Sinai was Israel's recognition that breaking God's covenant carried the penalty of death — a penalty only the blood of a perfect substitute could ultimately absorb.

3. What did it mean that blood was sprinkled on the people?

The sprinkling of blood on the people marked them as belonging to the covenant — as those whose lives were bound up with the covenant God. They were, in a sense, covered in blood. This is a powerful picture of atonement: to be under the blood is to be under covenant protection. Peter echoes this language when he writes to Christians as "elect according to the foreknowledge of God... for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:2). The blood of Exodus 24 and the blood of Christ both mark the people of God as His own.

4. How does this ceremony connect to the Lord's Supper?

At the Last Supper, Jesus took the cup and said: "This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins" (Matthew 26:28). The echo of Exodus 24 is deliberate — Moses's words ("Behold the blood of the covenant") and Jesus's words ("This is My blood of the new covenant") are unmistakably parallel. Hebrews 9:18–21 makes the connection explicit: as the first covenant was ratified with blood, so the new covenant was ratified with the blood of Christ. The Lord's Supper is the new covenant meal — Israel's covenant meal fulfilled and transformed.

5. What happened when Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the seventy elders saw God?

Exodus 24:9–11 records an extraordinary event: seventy-four leaders of Israel "saw the God of Israel" and "ate and drank" in His presence — and they did not die. This was a covenantal meal in the divine presence — an anticipation of the eschatological banquet the prophets foretell and the Lord's Supper inaugurates. The meal in God's presence, possible only because of the covenant blood, is a picture of the communion between God and His people that the gospel makes permanently possible.

6. What is the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant?

Hebrews 8–10 identifies several differences: the old covenant had an earthly tabernacle; the new has a heavenly. The old had repeated sacrifices; the new has one, final, sufficient sacrifice. The old could not perfect the conscience; the new cleanses it completely. The old was written on stone; the new is written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33). But the most important difference is the blood: "Not by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:12).

7. Why did the people say "All that the LORD has said we will do"?

Israel's threefold affirmation of the covenant (Exodus 19:8; 24:3, 7) was a genuine, solemn vow — and one they would not keep. This is the tragedy of the old covenant: it was made with people who lacked the ability to fulfill it. The new covenant's solution, as Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 predict, is not just new terms but a new heart — the Spirit enabling what the flesh could not achieve. "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes" (Ezekiel 36:27). The new covenant succeeds where the old covenant failed because it transforms its people from within.

8. What does "the blood of the covenant" mean for Christians today?

Every time Christians take the Lord's Supper, they are doing what Israel did at Sinai — remembering and re-affirming the covenant sealed in blood. Hebrews 12:24 says Christians have come to "Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel." The blood of Abel cried for vengeance; the blood of Christ speaks forgiveness. The covenant that was written in the blood of animals at Sinai is now sealed in the blood of the Son of God — an eternal, unbreakable bond between God and His people.