For 40 Days – Day 6: Covenant Renewed: Context

Key Episode Scripture: Exodus chapters 32-34

Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. (Exodus 34:10 ESVUK)

God takes relationships very seriously—so seriously that how He establishes a relationship between a man and a woman has serious consequences. His expression of how serious He is in relationships is seen in how He carries His eternal purpose through the covenants.

Whereas the first 40-day episode involved a covenant that God established between Him and all living creatures, the next covenant He established was between Him and a man to be fulfilled through a family lineage that would grow to become a people. This covenant would have a significant bearing on how the Saviour of the world would emerge and how humanity would finally be redeemed by God. This is the kind of serious nature with which God takes His relationships.

What’s remarkable about His relations with man is how His faithfulness with man meets with regular bouts of faithlessness from man.

God’s covenant with Abraham promised Him a people to inherit a land. God brought it about and the promise continued through his son, Isaac and then Isaac’s son, Jacob. Jacob would be known as Israel and be the father of a tribe who settled in Egypt to escape a time of famine. Centuries later, this tribe had grown into a nation, and their settlement in Egypt had turned sour as Pharaoh enslaved them. Their cries were heard by the God of the covenant with their fathers. His response was emphatic. The great power of the day was humbled by ten clear signs on display for all observers to be left in no doubt that this people belonged to the God of covenant.

It would be reasonable for those delivered in such a way to accept a responsibility to be faithful to the God who saved them. It would be human to discover that this didn’t happen. The same members of humanity who God said were always thinking evil in their hearts would be happy with being rescued one day and then grumble as though they wanted to go back not long after that.

That was highlighted in the microcosm in this episode, which involves two sets of 40 days. The focus for this exploration will be the second 40 days. The first 40 days were in the light of a dramatic encounter between the people and the God who rescued them. It was awe-inspiring and evoked fear in the people, who preferred Moses to talk with this awesome God. So, having heard clear instructions on how God outlined His relationship with them, Moses was invited to spend some time with God ratifying these instructions. They had witnessed something that should have given them the fear of God to keep on the right path. As would turn out to be a pattern for generations to come – despite an awe-inspiring encounter with God, it wouldn’t take long for even the witnesses to stray from the given path.

What provokes that second 40-day encounter with God will reveal much to us again about who God is, how He relates to man and the noble purpose of spending 40 days apart.

Next, we will get an overview of the episode’s content, which led to Moses’s second 40-day stint with the Lord.

For His Name’s Sake

C. L. J. Dryden

Shalom