Lesson #41

EXODUS 34
Lesson #41
THE RESTORED COVENANT

• Memory Verse: Exodus 34:6
• We have seen how the Israelites broke the covenant of Law that God had just given them. To physically represent this spiritual condition, Moses broke the stone tablets on which God had written the Law.

• Read Exo 34:1-17
• God told Moses to make two new stone tablets (1)
• What is the significance of the new set of tablets?
• The significance is that God was willing to renew the covenant with the Israelites. He would not totally destroy these people and begin again with a new generation of descendants of Moses.
• Therefore, by this action, we can know that God truly forgave the Israelites and was willing to begin again.
• Even though God knew they were stiff-necked people, God chose to forgive.them
• Even though the people broke the covenant, God chose to renew it.
• The Lord proclaimed His name (5)
• We have learned in Exodus that a name was very significant in that it revealed a person’s character, his life’s message, his prophetic future, his being.
• We have learned in the book of Exodus that the name of God revealed to Moses was Jehovah, the I AM, at the burning bush.
• Then we saw how God revealed to Moses the redemptive aspect of the name Jehovah when he brought the Israelites out of Egypt.
• Now we see at the end of our study when God renews the covenant, He tells Moses the characteristics of His name.
• What characteristics do we learn about God from this passage? (5-7)
• The Lord God
• Merciful
• Gracious
• Longsuffering (forbearance)
• Abundant in Goodness and Truth
• Keeping Mercy
• Notice that the aspect of mercy is repeated twice in this list. The first characteristic of mercy reveals to us that God extends mercy when we repent of a sin.
• “To keep mercy” means that God remembers the mercy He initially gave us when we repented and that He will will never turn back in the future to remember that sin of the past.
• Forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin:
• These three words are all words for sin, however, these words represent different aspects of sin.
• Iniquity = The perversion of what is good; depravation, injustice; something that is essentially evil, and something already prohibited or not. (Rom 1:21-23 Mat 7:23)
• Transgression = A determination to cross over some spiritual line. (Rom 3:23 1Joh 3:4)
• Sin = A general term that covers all aspects of sin. (Psa 51:2); A failure, an error, iniquity, transgression, trespass, illegal, without justice, absolute evil.
• It is a positive act of the violation of what is normal, or the voluntary act of that normality.
• It includes actions, thoughts, purposes, words, and desires, etc.
• He will not clear the guilty. (He is just)
• Mercy is one thing, but justice is another.
• God extends mercy through forgiveness, but justice demands a payment for sin committed.
• Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is the payment.
• The promises to His people:
• The Lord made certain promises to His people based on the previous characteristics of His name:
• God promises to do marvelous miracles to demonstrate His power.
• The people will see these marvelous works on earth.
• God will drive out the pagan tribes in the promised land.
• Notice that the scripture mentions six pagan tribes. While there were many more small groups of people, only six are mentioned.
• The number six is a symbolic Biblical number that represents fallen sinful man.
• God told the Israelites to kill all these pagan people, men, women and children, who lived in the promised land. Why?
• While this seems extremely harsh and is often criticized, God had a very good reason for it.
• All the pagan tribes in the promised land were involved in gross practices of idolatry that included religious sexual prostitution.
• Because of this gross immoral practice, there is abundant archaeological evidence that indicates an epidemic of venereal disease among these tribes.
• These restrictions placed on the Israelites are God’s loving protection of His people.
• God will do a “terrible thing” with His people. (10)
• The word, terrible, means = to incite terror.
• Therefore, this terror was a shield that God put around the Israelites that would cause their enemies to fear them. That shield is still around the nation of Israel today.
• Without this shield that causes fear in her enemies, Israel would not continue to exist in a world surrounded by her enemies.
• Warnings based on a new covenant:
• The Israelites must not make treaties with pagan tribes in the promised land.
• The purpose of this warning was to prevent the pagan tribes from being a snare, or a trap to the Israelites. What kind of trap?
• The trap of idolatry.
• The Israelites must not marry people from the pagan tribes in the promised land. Why?
• The pagan people worshipped other gods and marriage with them would be a trap to idolatry as well.
• While it is not mentioned here in this passage in Exodus, intermarriage with pagan tribes would pollute the blood line to Christ and cause the Israelites to eventually lose their separate identity.
• Exo 34:18-26
• In this passage, God again tells the Israelites of his expectations regarding the keeping of the Sabbath and the feast days.
• We have previously discussed all of these aspects the first time that God gave them in the book of Exodus.
• These laws of the Mosaic Law are re-stated because Israel broke the covenant with the worship of the golden calf. God wants to make sure they understood that the remaking of the covenant of law included all these things as before.

• Read Exo 34:27-35
• Moses was with the Lord in the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights.
• The number 40 is a symbolic number in the Bible that means testing for preparation.
• Just as Jesus was tested in the wilderness 40 days and 40 nights before he began His ministry, God was testing Moses for preparation of the task ahead. Moses was going to be leading the stiff-necked Israelites through the wilderness for the next 40 years.
• Moses wrote the ten commandments on the new tables of stone during these 40 days and 40 nights.
• When Moses descended from the mountain, his face was shining with the glory of God.
• Moses put a veil on his face so that he could speak to the people.
• From this time forward, Moses wore the veil constantly, except when he spoke to God directly, or when he spoke a direct message from God to the people.
• In our previous lesson we saw in 2Cor 3:1-18 how that veil became a prefigure of the veil put on the spiritual eyes of the Jews in this present day.
• In our study of the tabernacle, we saw how the veil between the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place prevented a close personal relationship with God just as the veil over the face of Moses.
• Through Jesus Christ and His crucifixion, the veil in the temple was torn to give us access to God.
• In the same way, through Jesus Christ, the veil over the spiritual eyes of the Jews will be removed at Jesus’ second coming.
• Read 2Cor 3:12-18

The Aspects of the Prefigure of the Veil
2Cor 3:12-18

The veil prevented the Israelites from seeing the fading glory of God	2 Cor 3:13
Moses’ veiled face prefigured the veiled glory of the Old Testament covenant of Law that could not bring a person into the full glory of God’s presence
The veil prefigured Israel’s blindness in recognizing Jesus Christ as the Son of God at His first coming.	2Cor 3:14-16
The veil prefigured the torn veil in the temple at the crucifixion that opened the way into God’s glorious presence through Jesus Christ.	2Cor 3:18
Moses’ veiled face prefigured by contrast the unveiled glory of the New Testament covenant where the believer is changed into the image of Christ by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

• Conclusion of the life of Moses:
• Moses faithfully led the Israelites to the promised land through their 40 years of wandering in the desert in unbelief.
• God did not permit Moses to bring the Israelites into the promised land because of Moses’ one sin of disobedience.(Num 20)
• Moses struck the rock when God told him to speak to the rock to obtain water.
• The significance of God’s decision is more profound than simply a punishment for this one sin.
• Entering the promised land represented the entrance into all the promises of God.
• The New Testament teaches us that we enter into all the promises of God by faith and not by works.
• Moses represented the works of the Law and Jesus represents the works of faith.
• Therefore, Moses’ restriction from the promised land presents us with God’s consistent plan of faith for believers who desire to take possession of God’s promises.
• The death of Moses:
• Read Deu 32:49-52
• Read Deu 34:1-8
• God permitted Moses to see the promised land before his death.
• Much later in time God permitted Moses to enter the promised land:
• Read Mat 17:1-13
• What significance is Moses’ appearance on the Mt. of Transfiguration?
• Elijah represented the Prophets while Moses represented the Law. Both the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament point to Jesus Christ the fulfillment of both law and prophecy.
• Therefore, both the Law and the Prophets are part of the kingdom of God.
• Therefore, it is by the grace of God that Moses personally experienced the promised land in the same way New Testament believers experience the fullness of God’s many blessings.
• Summary of the book of Exodus:
• We have seen how God called and developed a strong leader to lead His people.
• Moses is the most respected leader among the Jewish people.
• We have examined God’s deliverance from the many different gods of Egypt and His judgment on those gods through the 10 plagues.
• We have learned how God revealed to Moses and His people the very precious aspects of redemption that flow through the Passover and the Law.
• We have examined many differences between covenants of grace and the covenant of Law.
• And finally we have seen God’s marvelous plan physically displayed through the tabernacle and the priesthood.
• We have learned how the tabernacle and the priesthood prefigured:
• …our personal relationship with God through Christ.
• …our personal relationship to the church.
• …our personal relationship to each other as believers.
• Above all we have learned how Jesus Christ is portrayed personally in every aspect of the tabernacle and the priesthood.

The End
May God bless your relationship with your great High Priest, Jesus Christ.