The Lord has been providing the commandments and the various laws of the covenant He is about to confirm with the people. Now we begin a chapter in which Moses mediates the covenant, also known as the "first covenant" or "old testament", between the Lord and the people.
"Then the Lord said to Moses, '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. And the people may not come up with him.'" (Exodus 24:1-2) The majority of the Israelites are still at the foot of the mountain. Moses and Aaron, Aaron's two sons, and seventy elders are to come part of the way up the mountain, but only Moses is to approach the Lord's presence closely.
The Lord has been giving His instructions and requirements through the past several chapters and now the Lord formally provides the terms for a legal and binding covenant between Himself and the people. Moses passes the terms along to the people and the people accept them. "When Moses went and told the people all the Lord's words and laws, they responded with one voice, 'Everything the Lord has said we will do.' Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said." (Exodus 24:3-4a) When the people accept the covenant, Moses draws up the contract, so to speak.
The people accept the Lord's terms without question. They don't hesitate or ask for time to think about agreeing to keep such an enormous binding contract. I think this is because they have just recently been brought out of Egypt by His mighty hand. He has displayed His power and His ability to provide by making a way through the Red Sea, by making water come from a solid rock, and by providing manna from heaven to sustain them in the wilderness. On top of all that, they are still standing at the foot of the mountain that shook at the presence of the Lord while thunder pealed and lightning struck the mountain peak repeatedly and a trumpet blew from heaven. In their awestruck condition they can think of nothing else to do but agree to do everything the Lord is asking. Having witnessed so many signs and wonders from this God, they know no other god who can do such things, and in this moment they firmly believe in their ability to do everything such a God asks of them. They believe they will always feel this same amount of reverence and wonderment to sustain them and enable them to obey the Lord's instructions. But it won't be long before they come off this spiritual high and fashion an idol before which they will bow. Spiritual highs don't last forever and that's why we have to form a personal relationship with the Lord. The people will make the mistake of putting their focus more on their visible leader (Moses) than on forming a personal relationship with Almighty God and when Moses is out of their sight for several days they will panic and lose heart.
It's very important to know the difference between a true conversion experience and an emotional experience, and at this point in time I think the Israelites are having an emotional experience instead of a true conversion/salvation experience. I could give you an example to illustrate the difference from my own personal testimony, and I think I will relate my own personal testimony during this study but not until we reach the chapter where the Israelites break the commandment regarding the fashioning of an idol. I think it will illustrate the point better if we wait until then to look at the difference between a strong emotional response I had in a church at the age of sixteen and a true conversion experience I had at home at the age of twenty-two.
But for now the Israelites are very confident in their ability to keep their end of the bargain. They think they have the strength within themselves to refrain from breaking any of these commandments and laws. But none of us can keep all the Lord's commandments and laws, and when the Lord continues to break down His commandments and laws for them to the smallest and most thorough degrees, a bigger picture of the enormity of what He's asking will begin to form in the people's minds. They will have to learn to trust the Lord to make up for their shortcomings. They will have to acknowledge that only He can impute righteousness to human beings. They will come to the same conclusion as men like King David (of the Old Testament) and the Apostle Paul (of the New Testament, and say, "There is no one who is righteous. No one does good, not even one." (Psalm 14:1-3, Psalm 53:1-3, Romans 3:10-12) And if no one is righteous, and if no one can perfectly do good, what hope does anyone have? Our hope is in the Lord in whom we place our faith. He alone can make up for what we lack.
If we try to obtain righteousness by our own efforts we are always going to come up short. I've broken every one of the ten commandments. In some cases I've broken them literally. In other cases I've kept the letter of the commandment while breaking the heart of it. Not a single one of us can keep the ten commandments, much less all the other laws the Lord is going to provide in the Old Testament. But salvation has always been by faith: the belief that if we make God the Lord of our lives and put our trust in Him, He will impute to us the righteousness that we lack. This is how righteousness was imputed in the Old Testament times (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3), and that's how it's imputed in the New Testament times (the church age). I can't perfectly obey the Lord but my faith is in Christ, the One who did perfectly obey God and who shed His blood to pay for every transgression I ever have or ever will commit. We don't live every day on the spiritual high we experienced on the day we accepted Christ as Savior. We don't get through every moment of our lives basking in the glow of the emotions we felt at church last Sunday. We live by forming and maintaining and growing in our relationship with the One in whom we've placed our trust. And we live in the confidence of knowing that He forgives us when we mess up and that His sacrifice atones for our mistakes. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)
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