Exodus chapter 32 and verse 7. And the Lord said unto Moses,
Go, get thee down, for thy people which thou broughtest out of
the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned
aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They
have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have
sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel,
which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And the
Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and behold,
it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that
my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume
them, and I will make of thee a great nation.' And Moses besought
the Lord his God and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against
thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt
with great power and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians
speak and say, for mischief did he bring them out, to slay them
in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth?
Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy
people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and
Israel thy servants, to whom thou swearest by thine own self,
and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars
of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I
give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And
the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his
people. And Moses turned and went down
from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his
hand. And the tables were written on both their sides, on the one
side and on the other were they written. And the tables were
the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven
upon the tables. And when Joshua heard the noise
of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is
a noise of war in the camp. And he said, It is not the voice
of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them
that cry for being overcome, but the noise of them that sing
do I hear. And it came to pass, as soon
as they came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the
dancing, and Moses' anger waxed hot. And he cast the tables out
of his hand, and break them beneath the mount. And he took the calf
which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it
to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children
of Israel drink of it. And Moses said unto Aaron, What
did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a
sin upon them? And Aaron said, Let not the anger
of my Lord wax hot. Thou knowest the people, that
they are set on mischief. For they said unto me, Make us
gods, which shall go before us. For as for this Moses, the man
that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we want not what
is become of him. And I said unto them, Whosoever
hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me. Then I cast it into the fire,
and there came out this calf. And when Moses saw that the people
were naked, for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among
their enemies, then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said,
Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come unto me. and all
the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said
unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man
his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every
man his companion, and every man his neighbour. The children
of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and there fell
of the people that day about three thousand men. For Moses
had said, Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, even every
man upon his son and upon his brother, that he may bestow upon
you a blessing this day. And it came to pass on the morrow
that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin, and
now I will go up unto the Lord. Peradventure I shall make an
atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto the Lord
and said, O, this people have sinned a great sin and have made
them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive
their sin, And if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book
which thou hast written. And the Lord said unto Moses,
Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my
book. Therefore now go, lead the people
unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee. Behold, mine
angel shall go before thee. Nevertheless, in the day when
I visit, I will visit their sin upon them. And the Lord plagued
the people because they made the calf which Aaron made. Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading from his word. When Aaron made the golden calf
for the children of Israel to worship, Moses was still in Mount
Sinai receiving the two tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments
that had been written by God and instruction concerning the
tabernacle the construction of the tabernacle, its materials,
its form, its furniture and its purpose in worship. And Moses
had been absent from the children of Israel for 40 days. And now the Lord told Moses of
the terrible events taking place in the camp below. And we note
that God did not send Moses down before the suggestion of the
idol was first made, or even the day that it was made. He
allowed the wickedness of the people and the weakness of Aaron
to be fully exposed. Sometimes people suggest that
God hates it when evil things happen and say that he's weak
to stop them. But God allows men and women,
he allows us to express our evil nature and thereby we bring judgement
down on our own heads. Sin is man's fault and it is
never chargeable against God. God tells Moses that he will
destroy the people because they are so wicked and instead he
will make a great nation of Moses and so bring about by another
way the covenant promises of the Messiah through Moses' family. And in anger, God distanced himself
from the children of Israel saying that they were Moses' people
and that Moses had brought them out of Egypt. But we see Moses
pleading with the Lord not to destroy the children of Israel. not to hurt them in his anger,
because, says Moses, doing so would give our enemies cause
to speak ill against the Lord. And it would also undermine the
promises that God had made to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob,
or Israel, as Moses calls him. And Moses in this is a very humble
man. He's called a meek man and here
we see that meekness or that humility coming to the fore.
When he could have accepted this great honour of the nation of
Israel as it were flowing through his family. Rather, he takes the role of
intercessor and he pleads for the forgiveness of the people's
sins. Later in the passage in verse
32, Moses even suggests that he's willing to die rather than
have the people slain. And he offers himself as a substitute
for the people. In both of these acts, Moses
is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ who really did die as our substitute
and who presently intercedes for us in heaven. However, what
we find is that when Moses returns to the Israelite camp, he is
disgusted by the things that he sees and he smashes the stone
tablets that God had given him with the Ten Commandments written
on them by the hand of God himself. He smashes those to demonstrate
how the people have broken God's law. and how much they deserve
to be punished. And now it is Moses' anger that
waxes hot. Now, we read that several times
and I just want to mention it to you. Waxes hot has nothing
to do with hot wax. Wax means to grow or to increase. like the moon waxes when it is
getting bigger. And here we see that Moses' anger
grew progressively. The more he saw of the people's
wickedness, the more his anger grew, the more it waxed hot. and Moses picks up the calf and
he throws it in the fire, he grinds it into dust, he sprinkles
the dust and the ashes into the water and he makes the people
to drink of it to show them how weak and disgusting their idol
God really is. And he tries to get the story
about what has happened from Aaron And we find that Aaron
is what might be called economical with the truth, which means that
he only tells Moses the bits that don't make him look so very
bad. And Moses calls for men who will
be faithful to the Lord, who will stand up and he cries, who
is on the Lord's side? and the Levites join him, men
from the tribe of Levi. And he tells them to go through
the camp and to slay those who joined in the worship of the
golden calf. And we're told that 3,000 are
killed that day. Probably these are 3,000 from
the tribe of Levi and it may well be that there was other
elements of judgment went through different parts of the camp. But this is a very significant
chapter in the history of Israel and it is often mentioned in
scripture for an example of wickedness. For truly it was a wicked act. It shows us that sin and evil
is a constant threat. Even amongst people who have
been greatly blessed by God, They can quickly do things completely
against him. Do and say terrible things. And believers are not immune
from doing great wrong. We pray that the Lord will withhold
us from great sin. But Aaron was a believer. And
later he served as the high priest. But in this act, he showed himself
to be a terrible sinner. And we're reminded, just as Moses
interceded for Aaron and for the people, the Lord Jesus Christ
intercedes for his people, not relying on the arguments that
Moses used with God, but pointing rather to his own blood. and
to the cross and to the sacrifice that he made and that was accepted
on our behalf by God. And we're reminded also by this
account, how even when we have sinned greatly against the Lord,
there is a great forgiveness and a great cleansing to be had
in Christ's blood. Some people might wonder what
it means when the Bible says that God repented. Usually we
think of repenting as saying sorry for something that we've
done. And that's true. for us, but
when it is used of God, it means something slightly different.
It means that God is changing his stated will. He does not do what he is threatened
to do, but he takes another course of action than was first set
out or first proposed. Nor does it mean that God changes
his mind, but it is said to explain to us the reasons why God doesn't
act in one way, but rather acts in another way towards men and
women. And I'm sure that there are many
interesting things in this chapter, which is a fairly big chapter
that we could spend time. But I just want to mention one
more thing with respect to the book that is spoken of at the
end of this passage. Moses asked God to forgive the
people. And if not, he says in verse
32, blot me, I pray thee. out of thy book which thou hast
written. And this tells us that God has
a book or a record containing people's names. Now what book
is this? It seems as though Moses knew
about the Lamb's Book of Life, which the Apostle John speaks
about in the Book of Revelation right at the end of the New Testament. And this book, the Lamb's Book
of Life, contains the names of all those that were given to
the Lord Jesus Christ in the covenant of grace and for whom
he died upon the cross. Perhaps in fact, because we've
already said that it was the Lord Jesus who was speaking to
Moses on the mountain, perhaps the Lord had shown that book
to Moses on Sinai. And Moses had seen his name written
there. And if that is indeed the case,
then there's something very powerful here. In verse 33, the Lord said
unto Moses, whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out
of my book. Now, Psalm chapter 60, or Psalm
60 verse 28, tells us that this blotting out of the book is the
same as never having had your name written there. It means
that all men and women, boys and girls who live and die in
unbelief and without forgiveness of their sins will be shown never
to have had their names written in this Book of Life. Now maybe
you say to me, well I have sinned, does that mean that my name is
not in the Book of Life? I have said and done things against
God. I have broken God's commandments. And that is true. You have. I have. But this is the great difference
between Moses and Christ. Moses was a sinner like us and
he needed a saviour just as we do. But the Lord Jesus Christ,
when He died on the cross, took our sin on His own body, into
His own soul. He became sin for us by taking
our sin from us and making it His own. So that God sees us
not only as having no sin, but as never having sinned. He justifies us in His sight. He makes us righteous. He does not impute sin to us,
but rather He graciously and mercifully lays all our sin upon
His own dear Son who died in our place. And in that sense,
we have not sinned against God because God has taken all our
sin and placed it to the charge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Justice
was satisfied and God was satisfied when the Lord died for the sin
that we committed. Moses never could do this for
the people, despite a willingness to sacrifice himself for them. Moses learned a lesson that day. Only the spotless Lamb of God
could take away sin. May the Lord teach us all that
great truth and cause us to believe it to the salvation of our souls. and to trust thereby that our
names are recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life. Amen.