Two children named Edmund and Lucy sat in a British bedroom, looking longingly at a picture of a ship on the opposite wall – “a ship sailing nearly straight towards you.” The picture reminded them of Narnia, a land they had visited and loved.

Their cousin Eustace walked in, grinning and eager to annoy. “It’s a rotten picture,” he said.

Suddenly, “all three children were staring with open mouths.” For “the things in the picture were moving”: “Down went the prow of the ship into the wave and up went a great shock of spray.”

Astonished, the three felt the sea breeze. They smelled salt air. Before they knew it, a “great cold, salt splash had broken right out of the frame” and smacked them. Just when they thought they’d regained their balance, “a great blue roller surged up round them, swept them off their feet, and drew them down into the sea.”

Other people who entered that room saw a picture on a bedroom wall. But three children plunged through the picture into an unseen, unsettling and utterly astounding world.¹

Every time I read that opening scene from C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it delights me. Every time I read Scripture, this delights me more:

The Lord loves to paint pictures.
He works in real time and in eternity,
and what you see is what you get.
Look with your physical eyes,
and you see an actual person, place, object, event,
or a snippet of real, down-to-earth life.
See with the eyes of your heart –
and you get much, much more.

God

The day Moses trekked up Sinai for a fifth time, he did not go alone, and he only went partway up.

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. (Ex. 24:9-11)

They. Saw. God. Surely those grown men stared with open mouths. Surely their hearts leapt out of their chests. Somehow they also ate and drank.

So let’s look too. Let’s see if this brief story might take us somewhere unseen, unsettling and utterly astounding. Let’s plunge into the living Word of the living God.

Covenant

Four times before, God had called Moses up Mount Sinai. Four times, God gave Moses messages for the people, and sent him back down. All the messages were really one:

The Exodus was not primarily about God bringing a people out of one land and into another. It was about him and them.

Sending Moses to Egypt to deliver them, the Lord had promised:

I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. (Ex. 6:7)

Now at Sinai, these were his first words:

You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. (Ex. 19:4)

And thus the Lord God invited a people to covenant with him; they, to be his people; he, to be their God. In that relationship:

• They could know him, and learn firsthand his character and his ways.
• They could know themselves, and become the people he had created and delivered them to be.

From his first message, the Lord made clear: Embracing what he was offering hinged on keeping covenant with him.

Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. (Ex. 19:5-6)

Keeping covenant has everything to do with being faithful – and trusting trustworthiness – in the relationship.

A faithful God asked, “Will you be faithful to me?” But the people gathered at Sinai heard only a call to keep his rules. And three times they pledged, not trust in him, nor wholehearted commitment to him, but misplaced confidence in themselves. Three times, they said, in effect, “We will do this thing perfectly.”

Hearing God’s first message, “The people all responded together, ‘We will do everything the Lord has said’” (Ex. 19:8).

Then, a lot happened in a short time. Moses climbed Sinai twice more, preparing the people to meet with God.

The Lord came to introduce himself, arouse profound reverence and deter them from sin. He spoke aloud the ten bullet points of the covenant – commandments crucial for life, and for relationship with him and each other.²

The people asked that he not speak to them again.

Moses climbed Sinai a fourth time, and the Lord gave him an assortment of laws that fleshed out the ten bullet points, spelling out God’s terms for relationship.³

When Moses told the people these laws, they responded for the second time, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” So Moses “wrote down everything the Lord had said” and prepared for the covenant ceremony.

He got up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up twelve stone pillars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he sent young Israelite men, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord.

Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he splashed against the altar. (Ex. 24:4-6)

Next, Moses read to the people the entire message he had said to them the day before. A third time, they answered, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.”

God knew they were saying yes to keeping his rules – and no to really knowing him. He knew how very few days would pass before they betrayed him.

Yet still, the Lord pursued his intent to enter, and to keep, covenant with them. Still, he wanted to be their God. He accepted them as his people.

Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” (Ex. 24:8)

Worship

Already, God had told Moses what to do next:

Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, but Moses alone is to approach the Lord; the others must not come near.⁴ (Ex. 24:1-2)

When the 74 did as the Lord had said, they saw God. As an act of worship, they ate and drank.

What an experience! What a moment to remember for the rest of their lives! And yet, we have the opportunity to experience God in a far more profound way than they did.

The nation they represented had entered a covenant with God, sealed with the blood of animals. Of the million-plus people whom the Lord accepted that day as his own, only a select few saw him and ate the covenant meal. Even they worshiped at a distance. And they did it only once.

Miracle

Jesus and the twelve reclined at table in an upper room, eating the Passover meal.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt. 26:26-28)

The disciples must have wondered what in the world Jesus meant. But after his death and resurrection, they knew: God had made the way to offer “whosoever will” a covenant sealed with the blood of the Lamb.

Of the millions down through time who have entered that covenant, every one – male and female – has an open invitation to know God intimately, to approach him confidently. Anytime, anywhere – though always, only, on his terms.

What’s more, our Lord has invited us to partake of a covenant meal. Not once, but again and again until he returns, he calls us to eat and drink as an act of worship.

We who have confessed Jesus as Lord may have taken communion many times. But in observing the ritual – and gazing on the picture it paints – how often have we failed to plunge in?

Mystery

The 74 who climbed Sinai saw God. They ate and drank, knowing their Lord was gloriously present, knowing he had accepted them as his own.

The 12 who sat in the upper room saw the Lord. He sat among them, eating with them, revealing things they couldn’t yet grasp. They knew he had accepted them as his own.

When we take communion, we too can see God. The Spirit gives us sight. Jesus told us where to look.

Prepare yourselves, dear ones. This is mystery. It’s like being swept into a painting that has come alive.

Life

What Jesus said succinctly during the Last Supper, he had talked about at length the day after he fed the 5,000. Facing a crowd who wanted him to feed them again, he told them: “I AM the bread” – “the bread of God,” “the bread from heaven,” “the bread of life.”⁵

Earnestly, he cried:

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

At that, people became highly offended. They asked, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Unperturbed, Jesus said:

Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. (John 6:51-57)

“On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’” Many “turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:60, 66).

But those who knew their Lord and trusted him stayed. Later they understood: When Jesus declared that eating his flesh and drinking his blood brings life, he spoke of the mystery of believing in him.⁶ And also, he spoke of the mystery of the meal he would initiate.

(Jesus) Take and eat; this is my body. Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant.⁷

(Paul) We give thanks for the cup of blessing, which is a sharing in the blood of Christ. And the bread that we break is a sharing in the body of Christ. (1 Cor. 10:16 NCV)

Picture

Twelve hundred years after Jesus walked the earth, the Catholic Church officially adopted a doctrine called transubstantiation, the teaching that in communion the elements of the bread and wine literally, physically change into the body and blood of Christ. Three hundred years later, when the Reformation swept Europe, Protestant leaders rejected that teaching.

But in the swing away from a doctrine that I too believe is unscriptural, we beached ourselves. We began treating the bread and the cup as a picture to admire, rather than experiencing the life-giving, covenant-deepening mystery of sharing in the body and blood of our Lord.

And so, periodically, we may sip the wine or juice, swallow the bite of wafer or bread, respectfully remember the cross and go our way unchanged. And thus, we miss the rendezvous with God to which he has invited us. We bypass the deeper experience of truly communing with him.

Here’s the picture on the Old Testament wall:

Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel … They saw God, and they ate and drank.

See the people entering covenant with God. See their representatives eating the covenant meal, their eyes fixed on him who was now their God, their hearts deeply humbled and very, very full. See how their meeting with God on Sinai foreshadows another better, covenant and an even more profound covenant meal.

But do not just sit, looking longingly at a picture. Cry to your Lord to sweep you up into the living waters of his Spirit and his Word.

Pray that each time you take this covenant meal, you know he is present. You know he has accepted you as his own. And you share in the body and blood of Christ.

---

Image by hudsoncrafted from Pixabay

Seven Encounters with God series

Moses’ encounters with God on Sinai reveal remarkable things about who God is, how he relates to his people and how to cultivate intimacy with him. Lord, give us eyes to see.

• “Come be with me” – Seven encounters with God
• 1: The purpose of the wilderness
• 2: Prepare to meet with God
• 3: God who loves fiercely
• 4: When your world has changed
• 5: Mystery and life: The covenant meal
• 6, part 1: The place his glory dwells
• 6, part 2: One who stands in the gap
• 7: Radiant! A glory story

Footnotes

1. C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, © 1952), 3-4, 6, 7, 8. ↩︎
2. See Exodus 20 and the post, God who loves fiercely. ↩︎
3. See Exodus 20:21-23:33 And the post, When your world has changed. ↩︎
4. Nadab and Abihu were Aaron’s sons. ↩︎
5. See John 6:32-36, 41-42, 48-51. ↩︎
6. John explored this mystery in John 6:25-40. ↩︎
7. Matthew 26:26, 28. See the very similar statements in Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:24-25. ↩︎