Daily Lesson for Monday 1st of September 2025

After the firm reestablishment of the covenant with God, Moses again climbed Sinai. In the beginning of this climb, Moses was not alone. He had the excellent company of 73 Israelite leaders. For the leaders, this was the pinnacle experience: they saw God (theophany), and twice the text underlines this amazing reality. It was also a time for the leaders, by eating together, to seal the covenant with God. This was a banquet, and the God of Israel was their Host. These leaders were deeply honored by God.

Image © Educational Concepts Collection at Goodsalt.com

In the Middle East during biblical times (and to a certain extent today), eating together was a high experience, great honor, and privilege. It offered forgiveness and formed a bond of friendship. It implied being there for each other and staying together in times of crisis and problems. By eating together, they promised each other, without words, that if something should happen to one party, the other would be obliged to come and help. To be invited to a meal was a special treat that was not extended to everyone.

Meanwhile, to refuse an invitation was one of the worst kinds of insults. This insight helps us to understand the stories in the New Testament in which Jesus Christ was heavily criticized for eating with sinners (Luke 5:30). When believers celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they also establish this close bond with other believers who are sinners like themselves. During this meal, we celebrate the forgiveness and salvation that we have in Jesus (see Matthew 26:26-30, Mark 14:22-25, 1 Corinthians 11:23-29).

Tragically, some of the men who had gone up with Moses later fell into sin and lost their lives (see Leviticus 10:1-2,9). Even though they had such a deep experience with God there, they were not transformed or converted by that experience. What a powerful lesson about how possession of truth and sacred privileges does not automatically mean conversion. Having experienced what they did, these men should have been the last ones to have done what they would later tragically do.

<–Sunday Tuesday–>

(2)

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25c-10-seeing-god/

Daily Lesson for Sunday 31st of August 2025

The living God of the Bible is the God of relationships.

Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com

The important element for our Lord is not a thing or an agenda but the person. Thus, God pays close attention to people, and the primary purpose of His activities is to build a personal relationship with humans. After all, a God who “is love” would have to be a God who did care about relationships, for how can there be love without relationships?

Jesus said: “ ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ ” (John 12:32, ESV). God is interested not only in our ethical behavior, right doctrine, or in a set of proper actions, but, above all, in a personal, intimate relationship with us. Both Creation institutions (Genesis 1:1-31; Genesis 2:1-25) are about relationship: the first about the vertical relationship with God (the Sabbath) and the second about the horizontal relationship between humans (marriage).

The ratification of the covenant at Sinai was to reinforce the special relationship that God wanted to have with His people. In the ceremony, the people twice shouted that they would obey God in everything that He required. “Everything the Lord has said we will do,” they proclaimed (Exodus 24:3, NIV). They meant it, too, but they did not know their brokenness, fragility, and lack of power. The blood of the covenant was sprinkled on the people, indicating that only by Christ’s merits was Israel able to follow God’s instructions.

We do not want to accept that our human nature is fragile, weak, and thoroughly sinful. We have an inherent tendency toward evil. To be able to do good, we must have help from outside ourselves. This help comes only from above, from the power of God’s grace, from His Word, and from the Holy Spirit. And even with all this at our disposal, evil still comes so easily to us, does it not?

That’s why a close personal relationship with God was as essential to the people then, at Sinai, as it is to us today.

<–Sabbath Monday–>

(0)

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25c-10-the-book-and-the-blood/