Turn to Exodus chapter 24 for one section
of Scripture, and then we'll go to chapter 32 for the message. Exodus chapter 24. Now the children of Israel are
out of Egypt, and they're at the base of Sinai. And they're holding there. It says in Exodus 24, and we'll
start reading in verse 12, And the Lord said unto Moses, Come
up unto Me into the mount, and be there, and I will give thee
tables of stone and the law, and commandments which I have
written that thou mayest teach them." The people that are at
the bottom, the base of the mountain. And Moses rose up and his minister
Joshua, and Moses went up into the Mount of God, and he said
unto the elders, tarry here for us until we come again unto you.
And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. If any man have any
matter to do, let him come unto them. And Moses went up into
the mountain, and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the
Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six
days. And on the seventh day, the Lord
called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud, and the sight
of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top
of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel." So they
can see this. It's a pretty grand sight. And Moses went into the
midst of the cloud, just him by himself, apparently the elders
on the first section, the first tier, then Moses and Joshua,
and now Moses is all alone. Moses went into the midst of
the cloud and got him up into the mount And Moses was in the
mount 40 days and 40 nights. Now, before he goes up there,
he's talking to the children of Israel, back in the earlier
part of this chapter, and it says in verse 3 of Exodus 24,
And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord of
the judgments, And all the people answered with one voice. This
is what they said. All the words which the Lord
has said we will do. And look at verse 7. And Moses
took the book of the covenant and read it to the audience of
the people. And all the people said all that the Lord has said
we will do and we will be obedient. Now turn to Exodus 32. Exodus 32. Exodus 32, verse 1,
and then we'll jump forward a little bit. And when the people... Now
Moses is up there, 40 days to 49. He's still up there. And
when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the
mount, And the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron,
because they had an issue. They were supposed to go to Aaron.
And they said unto Aaron, Make us gods, which shall go before
us. For as this Moses, the man that
brought us out of the land of Egypt, we want not what has become
of him. Verse 7. And the Lord said unto
Moses, Get thee down, for thy people, which you brought out
of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves." That's you and me. All the time. They specifically
have turned aside quickly. That word, I looked it up before
we started. They were in a hurry to sin. And aren't we that way?
They they were they they has turned aside quickly out of the
way Which I commanded them they have made a molten calf and worshipped
it and sacrificed thereunto and Said these be our God thy gods. Oh Israel Which has brought thee
up out of land of Egypt now you talk about just in your face
God brought him out, but now they're attributing this to this
cap. 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, that I may consume them, and I will make thee a
great nation. And we'll stop reading there. Well, I say we stop reading there. Let's look at verses 25 through
29. And when Moses saw that the people
were naked, so he comes down off the mountain, here we pick
up, Moses sees the people that are 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 Moses. And Moses said unto them, thus
saith the Lord God of Israel, put every man his sword by his
side and go in and out from the gate to gate throughout the camp
and slay every man his brother, every man his companion, every
man his neighbor. And the children of Levi did
according to the word of Moses. And there fell of the people
that day about 3,000 men. For Moses had said, consecrate
yourselves today unto the Lord, every man upon his son and upon
his brother, that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day."
And we'll stop there. So, as I'm looking at this, and
I'm thinking about this, I get to thinking, how long was it
from Egypt to Sinai? How long was it that they had
seen the plagues? And the last plague, where God
spared everyone of the Israelites, the firstborn, and killed everything,
whether it was a beast, man, beast, whatever, from the household
of Pharaoh down to the one who works the stalls. That was the
last plague. And then Pharaoh said, get out
of here. Okay, they saw that. Then as they're walking, then
they come to the Red Sea, and then they see the army of Pharaoh
coming. And Moses said, stand still and
see the salvation of the Lord. And they saw. Seeing is believing? No. Believing
is seeing from the heart. So they saw the waters opened,
a sea, and it said the ground was
like dry land. They just walked right over.
Just like it was dirt. Not mud, dirt. Walked through
it, turned around, Pharaoh's great army, they saw all of them
wash on the shore. They saw that. They saw the cloudy
pillar and the fire. And now they're at the base of
Sinai. So we know, I wonder how many
days it was. I couldn't get a straight answer
from really any commentary. We know it's at least 40 days,
because Moses was up in the mountain 40 days. So it wasn't that long. It was a little over a month.
A little over a month. On the hills, of these Israelites
seeing such wonders that had never been seen or witnessed
to this corruption. They corrupted themselves. to
seeing the mercy and marvel and wonders of God's grace, which
we do every time we gather together, and every time you open the book
in private study, but every time we gather together in public
worship, we hear the glory of God. Matt reads from the book,
anywhere he reads, even if it was a genealogy, it would be,
the glory of God in there. We hear that every Sunday. We
see it and we hear it every Wednesday. So, from the heels of seeing
such wonders, never before seen, to corrupting themselves at the
base camp at Sinai, sin has reared its ugly head over and over again.
What about us here today? Where's our mind? Is our mind
here now, or what are we going to be doing after? What are we
going to be doing tomorrow? Where are we at? We promise many
things. Some which will never happen,
or may never happen, like we planned. But the point is that
sin follows us everywhere. Sin makes a wreck of our very
existence. My question is, you see this
here, we see our own lives, our own hearts, we see the lives
of others, What can be done? Or I should say, what has been
done? Look at verse 30, 31 and 32 of this chapter. And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses said
unto the people of God, said unto the people of Israel, you
have sinned, a great sin, And now I will go up unto the Lord,
peradventure, I shall make an atonement for your sin." Moses
is a type of Christ. That's exactly what our Lord
did for us. He went up to God. He was received
of God to make an atonement. for sin. Now we keep reading,
and Moses returned unto the Lord and said, Oh, this people have
sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, this is Moses speaking,
this is our intercessor, if thou wilt forgive their sin, If not, blot me, I pray thee,
out of thy book which you have written." Christ was made a curse for people
who hurriedly, quickly, eagerly went out of the way. We still do that. If you don't
know Christ, you're in the middle of this. This is what you do
all the time. So what can be done? What has
been done? Well, the short answer is, with
us, because of us, or with us, nothing. We can't do a thing. We can't do anything. We have
to cease from our works. Oh, I've come into church, I'm
praying, I'm reading my Bible. All these things are good and
necessary, but they won't save you. Christ is the Savior. You flee to Him. So the short
answer is from us, nothing. Nothing by us will ever satisfy
all the wrongs we have done and all that we are by birth, by
nature and practice. However, the true spiritual answer
is found in these three verses. The Lord Jesus Christ has gone
up and has made atonement. Moses is trying to make atonement. Christ did make atonement. Moses, it didn't die. Christ did sufficiently sacrifice
Himself. Now let's look at a few points.
Moses is a wonderful type of Christ. Look with me at verses
11, 12, and 13 of the same chapter. 11, 12, 13. And Moses besought
the Lord, his God and said, Lord, why does
your 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 consume them from the face of the earth?
Turn from thy fierce anger and repent this evil against thy
people. He's already starting to intercede
right here. He's already doing this. And look at what he says
in verse 10. God says to Moses, let me alone.
My wrath may wax hot against them, and this is what I'm going
to do. I'm going to wipe all them out, and I'm going to consume
them, and I'm going to make you a great nation." The first thing
I see here, Moses is a wonderful type of Christ. He's a man of
selfless honor and merit. God said, I'm going to destroy
them, and I'm going to raise to you a people. Now, when Christ
died, He died for His people, but Moses I'm going to start all over.
Moses is saying that he would rather decrease if God would help them. He would
rather decrease. He would not seek his own glory,
but the glory of his Father. That's what he's saying in verse
10. I'm going to do this and I'm
going to make you a great nation. No. It's not about me. your people. The second thing, well, Christ
was always seeking his Father's honor and promotion. He was never
seeking his own. From the scriptures, the New
Testament, we know this. His people are just simple, simply
sinners saved by grace. We're often unthankful, ungrateful, world-seeking and always undeserving,
yet Christ, through this picture of Moses, will atone for us,
fully knowing the consequences of his actions. Death on the
tree. And Christ was fully aware of
what the scripture said, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree,
Galatians 3.13. Second thing, second how Moses
is a type of Christ, Moses petitions for his people on the basis of
the Father's covenant promises. He besought the Lord, verse 11.
Why are you going to do this? You're going to bespeckle your
name. Your name won't be held in glory
throughout the rest of the world. And Egypt was probably one of
the largest countries in the world at that time, so it is
with the Son of God, who would honor God's covenant promises
to both God and our behalf. All's we can do is sin upon sin,
more and more, but Christ, born of a woman, made under the law,
came to redeem those under the law and to set the captives free,
Galatians 4, 4 and 5. The word redeem is to buy back,
which perfectly fits with electing grace, electing love. But he's
pleading his promise. He's saying, wherefore should
the Egyptians speak and say for mischief did he bring them out?
Verse 13, remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, he's talking about
the covenant. That's the third point. He, as
it were, reminds God, and I speak humanly, to break any of His
own promises or His own covenant would bring reproach to His name. So Moses is a type of Christ.
He didn't seek His own. He didn't save Himself. He died
to save us, to save His people. The covenant cannot be broken
And the promises are sure. And Moses says, I don't know
what was said. Nobody knows what was said when
Christ went to Gethsemane and sweat great drops of blood. He
may have been saying this, I don't know. But he was successful. And I just saw this this morning,
and we won't have to turn back, but another way in which Moses
is the type of Christ is back in chapter 24 and verse 16, when
it says, Moses went up and sat there. It didn't say he sat there,
but he went there six days. Day one, day two, and God wasn't
speaking with him. And he says on the seventh day,
and that's verse 16 if you want to take a look at it, he was
a man of patience. Scripture says in patience, possess
ye your souls. He had a baptism to be baptized
with. He was in a straight and fixed,
and he didn't hurry it. Everything was going according
to God's foreordained plan. We want stuff just like that.
Could we have sat six days? He didn't know he was going to
answer them on the seventh day. He sat there. for six days. Then God called
him. He stayed basically and waited
until Jehovah commanded him. Either all the promises of God
are truly yes and amen in Christ, or they are not. If they're not,
then we have no, but if they are in Christ, We don't even
need so much to say, but Lord, you promised this to me. We can
say, Lord, this is what you promised your son. And he has to listen. He has to. Because the covenant cannot be
broken. And God's promises can't be broken. So when there's times
you don't know how to pray or what to pray, I'm not sure if
this is a promise about me and my children or my neighbors or
family, mother, father, I don't know if this is... Lord, you promised your son that you
came to seek and to save sinners. That's what Spurgeon would say,
taking these things and kind of turning them back to God,
using God's own words, for power in prayer or for leverage. I don't know how to phrase it.
Humanly, it's awkward. You know what I'm saying. There's so many scriptures that
fit everyday situations. Well, let's look at another scripture
which points to the atoning work of Moses as a type of Christ
or simply Christ's mediatorial accomplishments. Look at Psalms
106. Describing this situation that
we've just read in Exodus 24 and Exodus 32 and the whole thing,
Psalms 106, let's start in verse 19 and we'll
go to verse 23. And 23 is what I want to look
at. Verse 19, they made a calf in Horeb and worshipped the molten
image. Thus they changed their glory
into the similitude of an ox. that eat the grass. They forgot
God, their Savior, which had done great things in Egypt, wondrous
works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea,
but here we go, therefore He said that He, God, would destroy
them had not Moses, His chosen, we know who the chosen one is,
Christ, stood before Him in the breach You know what that dash
and that semicolon, that dash, that's the breach. To turn away
God's wrath lest he should destroy them. Moses, his chosen, stood
before the Father in the breach between heaven and hell as it
were, between God and us. That word brief specifically
means a break. And yes, indeed, we, us, all
of us, broke fellowship in the garden with the Father, with
our Savior, our Creator, our Sustainer, by the other foolishness
of our sins, our iniquities, and our transgressions. And we
cannot undo what we have done. Nay, we don't even want to. We're
in a hurry to sin. But blessed be the Lord Jesus
Christ who has stood in our place, received the condemnation due
us, and we're set at liberty to serve, worship, and adore
Him who is everything to us." He stood in the breach. Ezekiel 22. And I bring this up for the one word,
Ezekiel 32. Ezekiel 30, I'm sorry, did I
say 32? I meant Ezekiel 22. Ezekiel 22, starting in verse
23. This is the Word of the Lord
came unto me saying, skip down to verse 29 and 30. The people
of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery. They have
vexed the poor and needy, yea, they have oppressed the stranger
wrongfully. They're like the children of
Israel. They're like us. I sought for a man among them that should
make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land
that I should not destroy it. But I found none." Now that word
gap is the only place used and it's the same word as breach.
It's the same word. It's Perez. P-E-H. R-E-T-S. It's the same words
in Psalms 106. That gap. God must be appeased. He is too holy even to look at
sin. Habakkuk 1.13. Sin has to be
dealt with either on us or on His Son for us. Now the scary
thing, the beautiful thing about Exodus is that Moses, he did
it. He was successful. The scary
thing is in this one, this is to show us the other side of
God, so to speak, humanly speaking. This shows His justice. There's
got to be somebody to stand in the gap. He's got to stand in
that breach. He's got to take everything that
God will dish out to satisfy His self, His law, His holiness,
His righteousness, His justice. If God doesn't find anybody,
if God does not have one, I should destroy it. That's what's going
to happen. He's going to destroy all those
who are not found in Christ. If God finds none to stand in
the gap, destruction is the result. So I beseech us, all of us, Sue
God for mercy undeserved. It could be that you and I are
the sinners for whom God in Christ Jesus was made to be sinned.
It could be God will be gracious and hear our cry. It could be
God will be known in compassion and sovereign love this day.
Look to Him and live. Whether we are saints or sinners,
We all have the same need. We need somebody to stand in
the gap, to stand in the breach for us. Thank the Lord Jesus
Christ for His mercy endures forever. Bruce, would you close
us?