“Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.” (Exodus 24:9-11)
It’s one of those incredible moments, a mountaintop experience, if you’ll pardon the pun. Humans, mere mortals, are allowed to climb Mount Sinai and eat and drink in the presence of God. They “beheld God,” in whatever sense that phrase is meant. I don’t think they saw God’s face as it were. Not long after this Moses asks to see God’s glory and is only allowed to see God’s back, which suggests that these men did not directly look upon God. Still, it was a special moment.
Not long before, Moses had presented the book of the covenant to the people, and they had pledged to obey the covenant (a promise which didn’t even last six weeks). As a sign of the covenant going into effect, Moses sprinkled the people with blood from a sacrifice, saying “This is the blood of the covenant,” the very words which Jesus used when he established the Lord’s Supper. There is a direct and intentional connection between this passage in Exodus 24 and the memorial meal which Jesus established.
The book of Deuteronomy speaks of God’s people eating “in the presence of the Lord” (12:7, 18; 14:23, 26; 15:20). That was a key aspect of the fellowship offerings which were offered on a regular basis.
As we join together at the table of the Lord, we experience a moment of “extreme fellowship,” if you will. Eating together joins us together, but it also joins us to the Lord. He is here with us. It is his table, and we are guests at it. We eat and drink in the presence of the Lord. There is horizontal fellowship and there is vertical fellowship. We eat this covenant meal, celebrating the pact that binds us to God and him to us. We commit ourselves to fulfill our part of the covenant, knowing that God is a faithful God who will always live up to his part of the agreement. In celebration of that covenant, we now eat and drink in the presence of our God.