“And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, Behold, the blood of the covenant the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
– Exodus 24:8
Exodus 24:8 is quite a picture. When you think about it, you put yourself in the audience so to speak at Moses throws out this blood over the people as a picture of how this covenant with God, the holy God of the universe making a covenant with sinful people, is only possible because of the sacrifice of another.
This Verse Reminds Us We Are Under the New Covenant
The blood of Christ has sealed the New Covenant. Thanks be to God that we are made clean in Christ and are united to Him forever.
Blood shed. Now, why is that? Well, think about it. The payment for sin is what? Death. In order to be saved from the payment for sin, someone has to die. In order for the justice of God to be shown, death must be doled out. This is a picture that we see all throughout the Old Testament that’s obviously setting the stage for Jesus to come in the New Testament, because we deserve death for our sin, yet Jesus died as a substitute sacrifice for us, and it’s his blood that makes covenant with God, relationship with God. All his good promises toward us possible. It’s only possible through blood.
Exodus 24:8 Reminds Us Why We Take Communion
That’s why then when it comes to the celebration of the new covenant in our worship gatherings as a church, what do we do? We take bread and a cup, and we remember when his body was given, when Jesus’s blood was shed. Thankfully, as a pastor and as a people on Sunday morning, we don’t throw blood on each other, but we do remind each other that it’s only by the blood of Jesus that we are in covenant relationship with God, meaning all of his promises to us are a reality.
All of his promises of salvation, and goodness, and grace, and love, and provision, and protection, and on and on and on, his covenant with us is totally based on the blood that Jesus shed. Jesus has given us a picture of that week after week after week in our worship when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
Exodus 24:8 Leads Us to Praise Jesus For His Blood
Jesus, right now we bow our hearts before you and we praise you for your blood. We praise you for paying the price of sin that we deserve to pay and for taking our payment upon yourself. O God, we praise you for dying on the cross as our substitute sacrifice. We will not forget. And we will remember as we worship that we are worshiping, O God, only because of the blood of Jesus, only because of his blood. We will praise you constantly for the blood of Jesus. God, we will praise you as we sin and we confess our sins, because we know we have forgiveness from you through the blood of Jesus. All glory be to your name, Jesus, for shedding your blood for our sins.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray For Other Nations
We pray that you would help us to make this good news known. Help us to tell others about your blood, about your payment for sin on their behalf, others right around us, others around the world. God, we pray today for the North Hausa in Nigeria. I think about people I know, friends I have who are working among the Hausa in Nigeria. God, please bless their work for the spread of the gospel to the Hausa in Nigeria, Muslim people who right now have little to no knowledge of the gospel, but there’s a few believers there and there’s missionaries working there. Please, bring more and more people into covenant relationship with you among the Hausa in Nigeria. This happens only through the blood of Jesus.
We praise you for the blood of Jesus. We pray that you would help us to spread the good news of his sacrifice right around us. And help us spread it around the world among people like the Hausa. In his name we pray, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
