Three verses in Exodus contain one of the more astonishing moments in the entire Bible.

Moses has come down off the mountain. He reports God’s requirements of His people, and they vow to meet them. He builds an altar, and the congregation worships, as God had promised. They ratify their vow, and Moses marks them with the blood of the covenant, the blood of their offerings that has given them such access as they have to the terrifying God who has come down in fire and cloud onto the mountain.

And then seventy-four men go up to where they can see God (Exod 24:9-10). They see where His feet rest on a celestial pavement (v. 10), and the Lord holds back His hand, allowing them shockingly near to Him, hosting a meal so they can eat and drink while experiencing a vision that by rights ought to be fatal.

Of these seventy-four, not one will eat and drink the yield of Canaan. Aaron’s sons will fall first, disregarding the Lord’s command in their service at the new tabernacle at Sinai. Aaron himself and the seventy elders will fall in the wilderness; Moses will see his people’s homeland only from a distance. In a matter of days, Aaron will go from seeing God to making a golden calf for his people to worship (no doubt with their elders’ at least tacit approval), so they can claim to have seen the Lord too.

So it seems to go with these suppers. God invites traitors and cowards to His table and feeds them on the eve of their craven acts of treachery.

Yet all those centuries later, the Lord who hosts the supper will be one with the new Moses who will stand in the breach and intercede for his people when they corrupt themselves definitively. They have seen Jesus and so have seen the Father; they will none of them stand on the Lord’s side when the hour comes. And yet their Lord will tell them, do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. This will not be the last Supper, but the first of many myriad.

The seventy-four saw the Lord, and ate and drank. The Twelve saw the Lord, and ate and drank. But none of them had yet seen the Lord glorified as he would be the next day at noon, thirsting and dying. We have seen this, we who have the eyes of faith. We know that we are in no position to say all that the Lord has spoken we will do; it is all that the Lord has spoken, His Christ has done. So we behold the Lord, and eat and drink.