A Nice Meal With God

And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words.”

Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel. And there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity. But on the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and be there; and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and commandments which I have written, that you may teach them.” (Exodus 24:8-12)

There is a way to see God and not die: look at the Son! Nadab and Abihu, like their father Aaron, were priests. Together with Aaron’s brother Moses and seventy other Israelites, they all went up on a mountain. There, they saw God and suffered no ill effects for it. What they saw was something that Isaiah and Ezekiel would later see as well: God on his throne (Isaiah 6:1-4 and Ezekiel 1:22-28). How can this to be reconciled with God’s statement that no one can see him lest they die, and the New Testament statements that no one has ever seen God? (John 1:18, 6:46) They saw God the Son, rather than God the Father.

Joel 2:32 says that “anyone who calls on the name of Yahweh will be saved.” Both Peter (in Acts 2:17-21 ) and Paul (in Romans 10:13 ) applied the passage to Jesus, thereby equating Jesus with the God of the Old Testament. After all, Paul says that the Son created the heavens and the earth (see Colossians 1:15-17).

The Father was merciful to his people. He let them see him in all his glory: his Son.

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