“A Holy God, A Sinful People, A Reconciling Mediator, pt.2 (Exodus 32-33)” | 7/23/23
Exodus 32-33 | 7/23/23 | Will DuVal
What’s the most trouble you’ve ever gotten into? I’ve mentioned what a stupid teenager I was, but I can’t remember if I’ve shared my infamous “water balloon” story yet, but here’s the abridged version: my buddies and I decided to throw water balloons at oncoming cars in the middle of December, when it was JUST cold enough that we actually broke someone’s windshield… someone who we would soon come to find out was a COP, when we ended up on the ground in HANDCUFFS. Fortunately - once he cooled off - he was pretty LENIENT with us, in 3 ways:
First, he didn’t press charges and send us to jail. The sheriff asked him - “Do you want ‘em to spend a night in the slammer? MARINATE on what they did?” And a couple of my buddies’ parents were ready to LET them. But he said, “Nah, send ‘em home.”
Second, he let us split the money for the new windshield and pay him back without any extra, hidden fees.
And third, when we brought him the check, we sat down and apologized, he warned us to LEARN from our mistake, but then he smiled and shook our hands.
Last week in Exodus ch32, God’s people - Israel - perpetrated a MASSIVE offense against God himself - forget breaking windshields; they broke God’s LAW! BOTH of His top TWO commandments, by committing the sin of IDOLATRY, building and worshiping a golden calf. And the Bible tells us that our SIN separates us from a holy God - Isa 59:2 “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God”. So now something has got to happen if that relationship - God’s relationship with Israel - is going to be MENDED; actually, THREE things have got to happen: 1) Remission, 2) Acquittal, and 3) Forgiveness.
1) To REMIT is “to refrain from inflicting or enforcing punishment” (32:14) “Nah, let ‘em go home… I won’t press charges.”
2) To Acquit is “to declare no longer guilty; to settle or satisfy” (32:35). “You paid for the windshield; now we’re straight.”
3) But to FORGIVE is “to cease to feel resentment against” (33:17). To smile and shake hands. Put the past - one’s offense - BEHIND us.
Well, last week we saw God RE-MIT and AC-QUIT Israel of her sin, but the problem’s still not solved. Because the relationship’s still not REPAIRED. Let’s quickly RECAP ch32:
1) First, we observed the Guidance of a Loving God (31:18).
In His LOVE for them, God graciously gave Israel His LAW, as a means of GUIDING them, showing them how to live “the good life”. But even as he was dictating the commandments to Moses up on Mt. Sinai, down at the BOTTOM of the mountain, we witnessed…
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And this morning, in Exodus 32 - this paradigmatic passage in all the OT on SIN, its causes and consequences - we’re gonna see that our sin ruptures our relationship with God in at least THREE ways; if you’re a classic “3-point sermon” kinda congregant, and you’re getting overwhelmed just LOOKING at my outline in the bulletin, feel free to run with this one instead: “Our sin breaks our relationship with God:
1) EMOTIONALLY (32:1-14; God doesn’t WANT a relationship tainted by sin; his LOVE opposes it)
2) LEGALLY (32:15-35; God must RECTIFY any relationship tainted by sin; his Justice DEMANDS sin’s punishment!)
And 3) PRACTICALLY (33:1-23; God can’t BE IN a relationship tainted by sin; His HOLINESS precludes it!)
Or sticking with my 16 point outline, there are really just 3 overarching points, or 3 PARTIES, that we need to see here: 1) GOD, 2) ISRAEL, and 3) MOSES. A HOLY God, a SINFUL people, and a RECONCILING Mediator.
But we’ve seen all along: all of Exodus, indeed, all of the OT, according to Jesus, is really intended to point us ahead to HIM. It’s an allegory: God is God; WE are Israel; and JESUS is the better Moses. The better MEDIATOR. How can we be brought BACK into relationship with a holy God, in SPITE of our sin? We’re gonna find out this morning. (...And NEXT week; this one will be a 2-parter. Cuz I don’t want to RUSH it; this is SUCH an important passage. We’re going straight to the heart of the GOSPEL this morning; the good news that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom [WE] are the FOREMOST.” (1 Tim 1:15). And because we can’t lose sight of that central message, and because we’ve got so much to GET to - NINE of the 16 points - I’m gonna try and limit my application of the text, as we work our way through. I’m even gonna hold most of my INTERPRETATION for the end. And most of this message will simply be OBSERVATION - “what does this text TELL us, specifically, about 1) who God is, 2) about who WE are, why our sin is such a problem for a holy God, and finally but most importantly: 3) what can be DONE about our sin problem; who IS this MEDIATOR?
So the first thing we need to appreciate here is:
1) The Guidance of a Loving God (31:18). Ch31 ends with a summary statement of really the last TWELVE chapters now:
“And he [God] gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.”
His 10 Commandments. Written on 2 tablets; God made 2 COPIES of the Law: one for HIM, and one for ISRAEL. That was standard practice with a covenant - to remind both parties of the terms and conditions. God didn’t NEED the reminder. But as we’ll soon see, before Moses can even come DOWN from the mountain, before these 40 days of receiving the Law are even up, Israel will have already forgotten their end of the covenant.
But before we even GET to that, let’s first recognize the GOODNESS, the LOVE of a God who would GUIDE his people, by giving us His word. So David praised God: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” God, THANK YOU, for LOVING us enough, to GUIDE us by means of your LAW.
But the very next VERSE, and the way it’s described here, we could even say SIMULTANEOUSLY - AS Moses is receiving the Law, what’s happening in real time, down at the bottom of the mountain?
2) The Folly of a Sinful People (32:1-6); ch32:
“When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to YHWH.” 6 And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”
In a word: IDOLATRY. But they actually broke BOTH of God’s top TWO commandments; remember: the first commandment prohibited the worship of FALSE gods; the SECOND one prohibited FALSE worship of the TRUE God. Israel did BOTH here! First, they make the golden calves - I say “calves”, plural; Aaron made the big one, but apparently the people added their OWN idols as well, because they shout in v4 “THESE are your GODS”, plural - so they broke #1; but then Aaron, perhaps in an attempt to syncretize, harmonize the peoples’ worship with the worship of YAHWEH, he builds an altar and calls a feast for THE LORD, in v5, breaking the SECOND commandment as well. Really, he misapplies, uses the Lord’s name in VAIN, breaking the THIRD commandment… and the list goes on.
Now I said I’d try not to add TOO much exposition as we go, but we need to camp out here on point # 2 for a bit, and make sure we don’t miss just how quickly-SPREADING and how deeply-ROOTED sin is. Sin is like a weed that you start to pull, but then you begin to realize “oh, this sucker’s got this EXPANSIVE root system that I can’t even seem to get to the BOTTOM of… but you better TRY, because if you LEAVE it, by morning, it’ll spawn a dozen NEW, baby weeds.
And I see at least TWELVE root sins here, that contributed to their idolatry. Ready for 12 SUB-points?
The first is 1) Impatience (“When the people saw that Moses delayed”); “What’s TAKING so long, Moses? I mean, I know God’s word is important… but 40 DAYS important?” “I know God’s will is important, but He’s taking too long.” So we take matters into our OWN hands. And we SETTLE; “Well, this guy is nice enough; I’m tired of waiting on a Christian guy…” “I’m tired of waiting on the FRUIT of this ministry, to which the Lord called me; I want RESULTS… now!” And we forget that - Lamentations 3:25 “The Lord is good to those who wait for him”.
2) Their SECOND root sin is PEOPLE-pleasing. There must have been a few rabble rousers leading the rebellion, but when MOST of the Israelites “gathered themselves together to Aaron” in v1, they were probably just succumbing to PEER pressure, the MOB mentality. But what’s underneath that? People-pleasing. No one wants to be the odd one out. So you tag along with your friends to the party you shouldn’t be at, teenager; you turn a blind eye to the numbers that don’t add up at work; you add your pronouns to your email signature; because after all, everyone ELSE is doing it.
3) The third root is simply Disobedience. (They demand, “make us gods who shall go before us”; remember: Moses had already come down the mountain - back in ch24 - to recite the commandments for them verbally. And remember how they responded? ““All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.”” (v3) Oh, how quickly they’ve changed their tune now. How quickly WE change OURS. We respond every WEEK: “We will go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”, and then we fail to TAKE those discipleship, evangelistic opportunities when the Lord provides them. We sing “Hallelujah, All I have is CHRIST… Jesus is my LIFE” on Sunday, but by Monday, we’re back to living for the JOB, bowing to the “Almighty Dollar”, idolizing our KIDS - friends: do we realize that you and I are every bit the IDOLATERS the Israelites were; we’ve just replaced the calf with golden paychecks, golden 401K’s; golden spouses, golden children.
How about #4) Criticism (“As for THIS guy, MOSES…”). It’s pejorative, in the Hebrew. Disparaging, dismissive. “Pshh, some savior HE was… brought us out here into the desert just to ABANDON us!” We criticize to try and justify our sin, don’t we? “If my husband were more like THAT guy, next DOOR, I wouldn’t HAVE to nag him so much.” “If my wife would meet my sexual needs, I wouldn’t HAVE to take matters into my own hands…”
#5) Doubt/ANXIETY (“as for this Moses, we don’t know WHAT has become of him”). “I know what God promised, but it’s been a couple weeks now; for all WE know, Moses could be DEAD up there!” And we FREAK OUT! “I know God PROMISED to work all things together for my good, but surely that can’t be true if we can’t get PREGNANT... if those test results come back POSITIVE - surely that means God must have FORGOTTEN about me. When God doesn’t work things according to OUR plan, we sound just like the Israelites, don’t we? “We don’t know WHAT has become of Him”. Where’s GOD in this? And we doubt, and we worry.
#6) Materialism (Aaron instructs them to “Take off their rings of gold”)- This is materialism not just in the sense of “caring too much about STUFF”, but in the broader philosophical sense of believing that “matter is all that is REAL”. We want “gods” that we can SEE and TOUCH, don’t we? SCIENCE has become one of our chief deities; “If I can’t SEE it, TOUCH it, PROVE it, it ain’t real.” FEELINGS are another god - “I don’t know about your “God”; all I know is how I FEEL. And if God IS real, surely He wouldn’t let me FEEL this way, if I wasn’t supposed to ACT on those feelings.” “I’ll take the boyfriend, stock market, dream house I can SEE over the God I CAN’T see, please and thank you.”
#7) Worldliness (Aaron “made a golden calf”) - which probably looked a lot like Apis, one of the chief gods from back in Egypt. You can take the people out of Egypt, but it’s a WHOLE lot harder to take the Egypt out of the people. God had called Israel to be different, HOLY, set apart; but time and time again, over the next 1,500 years of OT history, they cry, “We want a king just like all the OTHER nations… we want gods like THEIR gods…” Just like WE look around US and plead, “God, we want the same, comfortable, “American dream” lifestyle THEY have; we want to enjoy the same pleasures, indulgences, vices THEY enjoy.
#8) Forgetfulness (they declare, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt”) Philip Ryken laments: (981) “They had witnessed the plagues that God sent against the Egyptians for worshiping false gods. They had walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. They had eaten manna in the wilderness… drunk water from the rock. They had seen God’s glory on the mountain in fire and smoke. The Israelites had seen it ALL! …Yet in a matter of weeks they forgot everything that God had ever done for them.” Yet how quickly do WE forget? How quickly do WE go BACK, to false gods, which promise us deliverance, but really only further ENSLAVE us - “Porn, sex, TV, video games, alcohol, ice cream, social media “likes”... these are your gods, O Church, which promise you freedom and happiness, but leave a path of destruction in your life… they leave you in CHAINS.
9) Compromise (Aaron built an altar and proclaimed “a feast to YHWH.””). It’s not that we want nothing to DO with God. We just want God AND our idols TOO, so we conciliate, we accommodate. We try and strike a bargain with God: “God, I’ll start going back to church again - I’ll give you Sunday mornings; just don’t ask me to give up Saturday nights with HER.” “God, I’m not ready to let go of that grudge just yet; there’s PLENTY of room in my heart for both love of YOU AND resentment of my neighbor.”
10) Self-centeredness - v6 tells us they “offered burnt offerings and peace offerings”, but God hadn’t actually INSTRUCTED them in making such offerings yet; he won’t do that until the Book of Leviticus. So they were just making it up as they WENT, worshiping God on THEIR OWN terms. R.C. Sproul (in Ryken 977) explains: “The cow gave no law and demanded no obedience. It had no wrath or justice or holiness to be feared… It could not intrude on their fun or call them to judgment. This was a religion designed [FOR men] BY men.” We want a god made in OUR image, instead of the other way around. A god who affirms me, values what I value, my politics, my worship style preferences; a god who is concerned with the sins I’M concerned with - wokeism and social progressivism - but LESS concerned with the ones I tend to overlook - injustice and oppression. We want a god like US, one we can worship on OUR terms.
#11) Licentiousness (they “sat down to eat and drink and rose up to PLAY.”) let-tza-CHEK; it’s a Hebrew euphemism for sexual immorality. Make no mistake: this was a drunken ORGY. But hey, you only live once, right? Party up, while you can!
But at the heart of ALL of it, #12) was PRIDE / Stubbornness! (God calls them THREE times in this passage, “a stiff-necked people”) In their PRIDE, Israel was like a beast of burden who refuses its Master’s YOKE. And in OUR pride, don’t WE do the SAME? What IS sin, if not stubbornly insisting that YOU know better than GOD.
In all these ways, for all these reasons, we see The FOOLISHNESS of a REBELLIOUS People. Israel’s rebellion. OUR rebellion.
And what kind of RESPONSE does it RIGHTFULLY elicit, from GOD?
#3) Our sin provokes The Wrath of a Holy God (32:7-10); v7:
7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. [There it is, first time…] 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”
God says, “I’ll just start all OVER again with YOU, Moses, like I did with NOAH, after the FLOOD; make a clean sweep of this people… of “YOUR people” - did you notice: God is ready to DISOWN them! “I don’t want anything to DO with them, Moses; you can have them!”
This is one of the HARDEST doctrines - God’s WRATH against sin - for modern people like us to swallow, but that’s just because we understand so LITTLE of BOTH God’s holiness, AND our SINFULNESS. We minimize BOTH. If we had even the FAINTEST GLIMPSE of just how holy God is, OR just how SINFUL WE really are, we wouldn’t ask “How could God disown them?”; we’d ask “Why did God want them in the FIRST place? Why does a holy God even DESIRE relationship with wicked rebels like us in the FIRST place?!” Moreover, how CAN a perfect God BE IN - STAY IN - relationship with sinners like us? Answer…
#4) Only through The Intercession of a Godly Mediator (32:11-13); v11:
11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt [I didn’t do it, God; YOU redeemed them; they rightfully - for better or worse - belong to YOU! And then watch this; Moses reminds God: “you DID it…] with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did [God] bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’”
Remember: Moses had a pretty sweet OFFER on the table: his OWN people! The “Moses-ites”! But he declined. Why? Because Moses wasn’t CONCERNED for his OWN name and fame and glory; Moses was radically GOD-centric; he hungered for GOD’S glory and fame! Just look at the 3 reasons he gives God here, to spare Israel; they’ve got nothing to do with Moses… or even ISRAEL, really! They’re all about GOD:
Preserving a witness to God’s POWER, v11
Protecting a witness to God’s MERCY, v12; and
Perpetuating a witness to God’s FAITHFULNESS, v13.
THAT is Moses’ plea: “God, save Israel for your OWN sake! So that YOUR power, YOUR mercy, YOUR faithfulness might STAY on display, for ALL the nations to see!”
Now that’s a prayer that God will honor and answer. And so we see…
#5) The Forgiveness of a Merciful God (32:14); v14:
14 And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.
Now, if we ended the sermon right there, we’d have an Israel SPARED of total annihilation, which is already more than they DESERVE. But it’s still short of what God DESIRES. Because for some strange reason - actually, for a very GOOD reason, a GOD reason; because God IS love, that’s the essence of His very BEING - God still desires relationship, even with sinners. That’s extremely good news for sinners like Israel, and like you and me - God won’t just SETTLE for NOT OBLITERATING us!
So He sends His MEDIATOR; FIRST, to REBUKE us…
#6) is The Rebuke of a Righteous Mediator (32:15-20). Unlike your dysfunctional family, God is NOT conflict-averse. He knows that a problem unaddressed is a problem un-SOLVED. So he sends Moses to address it; v15:
15 Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. 16 The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. [God wants to make it ABSOLUTELY clear: this is HIS Law they’ve broken. v17…] 17 When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” 18 But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” [It was a STRANGE sound, that CONFUSED him… because it WAS the sound of singing, and yet because they were singing to the GOLDEN CALF, it sounded to Joshua’s consecrated ear, like WAR - war against the One TRUE God! v19…] 19 And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses' anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. 20 He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.
Why? THREE reasons: 1) to PUNISH them; it couldn’t have TASTED good; 2) to PURGE the idol; they wouldn’t be rebuilding this calf again any time soon! And #3) to give them a PICTURE of what GOD thought of their idols. When they did their business the next morning and noticed they’d PASSED the golden flakes, they’d have this indelible PICTURE burned in their memories: “THIS is what GOD thinks of our IDOLS: they’re nothing but a steaming pile of… YOU-KNOW-WHAT!”
Moses ALSO gives them a picture of what they’ve done to God’s commandments, by SHATTERING them into a thousand pieces. But he is RIGHT to be mad; this is RIGHTEOUS indignation; v19 uses the exact same words to describe MOSES’ reaction (his “anger burned hot”) that were used of GOD back in v10; the text is making a linguistic connection between Moses and GOD here, to identify Moses WITH God.
And what is Israel’s RESPONSE? Initially, at least, we see…
#7) The Remorselessness of a Stubborn People (32:21-25). As evidenced by AARON, their high priest, God’s chosen representative of the people, in v21:
21 And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” [“Brother, they don’t have you TIED UP… they’re not holding you at SWORD-point… why have you allowed this idolatry to GO ON?! But Moses learns it’s even worse than he THINKS; Aaron too has blood - gold - on HIS hands! Watch Aaron’s reaction:] 22 And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 23 For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf”!
How does Aaron respond? By 1) MINIMIZING - “Cool your jets, Moses; what’s the BIG DEAL?!”; 2) BLAME-SHIFTING - “You know these people, Moses; THEY’RE the problem!”; and 3) out-and-out LYING - Oh, Aaron remembers the Israelites’ sin, their exact words when they approached him about the calf WORD FOR WORD. But all of a sudden the details get real FUZZY when it comes time to own up to his OWN part in the revolt. “Moses, can you believe it: I threw their gold in, and this CALF just jumped RIGHT OUT!” It’s comical; this whole story is a TRAGI-comedy. Our sin would be LAUGHABLE, if it weren’t so catastrophic.
And like Aaron, when CONFRONTED about it, all too often we MINIMIZE - “It’s just GOSSIP; what’s the big deal; it’s a victimless crime; she’s not even here; no one’s feelings are getting hurt…”. Or we BLAME-SHIFT - “My parents didn’t AFFIRM me enough… My wife doesn’t attend to MY needs enough … My husband doesn’t LISTEN enough… there’s always SOMEONE to blame… someone ELSE!. Or we just outright LIE. Like Aaron, we engage in some revisionist history: “Well, that’s not how I remember the conversation…” And somehow we always come out looking better, while others come out looking WORSE.
And what’s the end RESULT of such remorselessness? Our rebellion gets REINFORCED. v25:
25 And Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for Aaron had let them break loose, to the derision of their enemies),
Israel was supposed to be God’s light in a dark world; an EXAMPLE to the nations. Instead, in their rebelliousness, they’ve become a LAUGHING STOCK. “Jews Gone Wild”. And worst of all, they don’t even seem to see the PROBLEM with it.
So there is only one SOLUTION…
#8) The Calling & Cleansing of an Obedient Mediator (32:26-29)
26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord's side? Come to me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. 27 And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, [This isn’t MY command; it’s GOD’S; I’m just obediently passing it on:] ‘Put your sword on your side, each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.’” 28 And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell. 29 And Moses said, “Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day.”
See friends, God loves his people too much to make ANY allowance for SIN amongst them. He wants us to make a clean SWEEP of it. In the NT, 1 Corinthians 5 says if a brother or sister is caught in serious, public, unrepentant sin, that we - the Church - must “remove [them] from among us… Purge the evil person from your midst.” Because even “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”; sin is a CANCER, it’s a VIRUS, it inherently wants to SPREAD. And if even ONE of these 3,000 unrepentant idolaters was allowed to survive, the people would be building calves again in a matter of weeks. This is not the kind of cancer you sit back and watch, to see if it metastasizes; No, sin must be cut OUT, cut OFF, at the root.
Notice Moses’ CALLING here: “Who is on the Lord’s side?” The first ALTAR call in history. You’ve gotta LEAVE your sin, to come get right with God. True, biblical repentance isn’t about “asking God into your life”; it’s about LEAVING your OLD live BEHIND, to come find NEW life in CHRIST! We don’t ask Jesus to come in and just baptize our old way of life, “Sure Jesus, you can come along for the ride”; NO! We hand over the KEYS! Surrender our life to HIM, to be lived for HIS glory, HIS purposes. Like Abraham Lincoln famously replied, when he was asked whether or not GOD was on their side, in the Civil War; he said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
So there Moses and the Levites stood, bloodied swords, trusting that God would BLESS them for their obedience, their PASSION for His Holiness, and the PURITY of his PEOPLE. Yet, as their LOVING intercessor, Moses knew that Israel STILL wasn’t right with God yet, the relationship STILL hadn’t been fully restored. God had decided not to completely annihilate them, Moses had confronted them, the people have finally STARTED to turn from their sin, and come back to the Lord, but Moses knew that a sin had been committed, and God’s justice demands that sin be PUNISHED. So the story - the FIRST half of the story anyway - culminates here in vv30-32, with
9) The Sacrifice of a Faithful Mediator (32:30-32); in v30 we read:
30 The next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” 31 So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, if you will forgive their sin — but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.”
God: forgive this people… OR ELSE, punish ME in their place - “blot ME out of your book”; that’s the “Book of the Living” referenced in Psalm 69:28; God keeps a book with the names of all those alive on earth; Moses says: “God if you won’t FORGIVE them, then KILL me!”
The apostle Paul prayed a similar prayer for his Jewish kinsmen in Romans 9:3 “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers,[a] Israel”, if THEY would just repent and BELIEVE in JESUS!
That’s a noble, selfless prayer. But here’s the problem: it won’t WORK. God TELLS Moses so in the very next verse, where we’ll pick up NEXT week, v33: “But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book.” In other words: “Moses, you can’t DIE for the sins of the people.” Why? Because Moses doesn’t have the spiritual BANK ACCOUNT, himself, to underwrite that kind of CHECK. That’s what we’ve GOT to see here as we wrap up this morning, friends - we’re gonna skip ahead to the CONCLUSION that will only get further reinforced in the SECOND half of the story next week, but we ALREADY see it coming into focus here halfway through:
Conclusion: Our NEED for a BETTER Mediator!
We need the intercession of a mediator who isn’t just “GOD-LY”, but who is actually himself GOD, and who therefore has the spiritual line of CREDIT, in his account, to be able to cash the check that Moses tried to but couldn’t. A more obedient mediator, who satisfied ALL of the Law’s righteous demands, but then was so loving that he would willingly TRADE his righteousness for OUR sin and guilt. A mediator so faithful to his people, and so self-sacrificial, that he wouldn’t force US to drink the cup of our own sin and shame, but he would HIMSELF drink it, drink the cup of GOD’S WRATH, that he might TRULY, PERMANENTLY, ETERNALLY reconcile us back to God. A mediator who was willing to be blotted out of the Book of the Living for 3 days, that OUR names might be ADDED to the “Lamb’s Book of LIFE” for the rest of ETERNITY.
Friends: we needed JESUS! Jesus is our better mediator, to whom God said, “Go DOWN, from HEAVEN, I need you to DEAL with this people’s SIN”, but instead of wielding the SWORD to cleanse them, THIS time, YOU are going to ENDURE the sword, in their PLACE. Jesus, you are going to endure the CROSS, to display MY POWER (over sin and hell and death), to display MY MERCY (that while they were YET SINNERS, stiff-necked, minimizing, blame-shifting, self-deceiving, Hell-bound REBELS, Jesus, you go DIE for them), to display MY FAITHFULNESS (that no matter HOW far they wander and stray and rebel against me, I’m the Hound of Heaven, and I WILL hunt them down and bring them back home, because I am their FAITHFUL and LOVING Father.
And friends, JESUS is our faithful and loving MEDIATOR.
1 Tim 2:4 says God “desires all people to be saved…” and THEN it tells us how we can BE saved, how God has DEALT with our SIN problem: “there is one mediator between God and men, [between a HOLY God and a SINFUL humanity…] the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all”.
Friends: God so loved the world that he gave his ONLY Son, Jesus, that whoever believes in Him, simply trusts in JESUS, shall NOT perish but have EVERLASTING life. Will you turn from your sin, and trust in God’s Mediator today?