Talk about name-dropping! Imagine being able to say, “I had a meal yesterday—with God.”
The story in Exodus 24, as Alice said, gets curiouser and curiouser. Again Moses goes up the mountain, but this time with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders. Amazingly, “they saw the God of Israel” (v 10). We don’t know what they saw, but this experience was thought to be fatal to humans, and for good reason. Moses will later meet regularly with God, and speak “face to face” with Him (33:11), but this is a figure of speech since, as Jesus said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:24). God Himself explains: “I speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark sayings” (Num 12:8). God spoke with Moses not by visions or allegories but in direct speech. Later, when Moses asks to see the Lord’s face, He replies, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live” (Ex 33:20). At that time, Moses was allowed to see God’s after-glow as He passed by. We discussed earlier that those like Jacob, who said he saw “the face of God” (Gen 33:10), were seeing some form of the Son of God because “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (Jn 1:18). However, on this day the Lord provided a meal to celebrate Israel’s covenant. This fellowship He offered the whole nation, but they had refused. The Bible’s understatement is breathtaking: “So they saw God, and they ate and drank” (v 11). Today, through His Word, we’re offered supper with God too: “If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20). We look forward to the day “when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn 3:2). How amazing is that!