The King’s English

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Leviticus 13:45-46; Mark 1:40-45

I’ll never forget when Mark told me he was HIV positive.  The two of us were in a cafe in London and had just ordered all day breakfasts.  Many people had tried to help him off the streets and off the drugs but he’d finally succumbed to a dirty needle.

He had quite a few scabs on his face that were red raw.  Some of them were bleeding.  As drops of blood formed on both cheeks, I croaked, “Hey mate, you might want to mop up your blood.”

I managed half a mouthful of breakfast that morning.

Unfortunately in our culture AIDS carries social as well as physical implications.

This is nothing new.  In the Old Testament there was one disease that, for the purposes of the law, was invested with massive social and even spiritual consequences.  Leprosy.

As we’ve seen, the Old Testament law was a dramatization of spiritual truths.  The tabernacle, priests and sacrifices didn’t actually “do the trick” but they pointed to the future work of Christ.

In amongst all these laws were regulations about surface level realities.  So, for instance, walls that were infected with mildew were a big deal (Leviticus 14:35-57).  They were a sign of a creation that is deeply flawed.

Similarly, skin diseases were highlighted in the law not because the skin is more important than the rest of us.  In fact it’s the opposite.  The law concerns itself with external uncleanness as a sign of deeper issues within.  The leper, with unclean skin, reminds us of ourselves with unclean hearts.

And so it is chilling to be reminded how our uncleanness deserves ostracism from both God and man.  Here is what the priest was to declare about the leper:

He is a leprous man, he is unclean: the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean; his plague is in his head. And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.  (Leviticus 13:44-46)

This is what we deserve on a much deeper level.  Outer darkness and shame.  And just as with the leper, there is nothing we can do about it.

But there is hope for the leper.  There is nothing that the leper can do, but there are things that can happen to the leper for his cleansing.

First,

the priest shall go forth out of the camp  (Leviticus 14:2)

Here is the beginning of it all.  The priest would meet the poor wretch in his wretchedness.

Secondly, sacrifices.  There is a ritual involving two birds (Leviticus 14:4-7): one bird is sacrificed, the other is sprinkled by the blood of the first bird, then released.  The leper is being taught that his freedom costs the blood of another.

Thirdly, the leper goes away for a week and shaves off every hair on his body.  He returns on the eight day looking like a newborn baby.  In a deep sense he is born again.

This is a picture of our own spiritual cleansing.  Christ meets us in our depravity, dies for us, cleanses us with His blood and raises us in His resurrection to new life.

And when He met a leper in Mark chapter 1, Jesus was able to effect this reality in person:

And there came a leper to Jesus, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.  And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.  And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. (Mark 1:40-43)

The Jews, I’m sure, feared that Jesus would have become unclean by contact with the leper.  But instead Jesus gives the man a good infection.  He is “moved with compassion” for the man’s plight, reaches out to touch him (unthinkable in Jesus’ day) and His cleanness passes over to the leper.

Let me take you back to my friend Mark.  Imagine the same scenario.  He confesses to this infectious and fearful disease.  But imagine the person opposite is not like me.  They don’t shrink back, they reach out.  Imagine them touching his face, getting their own hands bloody.  And imagine them healing the sores, cleansing the blood, curing the illness, removing the shame, restoring Him to health and wholeness.

This is what Jesus does to the leper.  It’s what He does to all the spiritually unclean who run to Him.

In Mark 1, the healing seems so effortless.  But just as the freed bird was only released at the cost of blood, so the leper’s cleansing had a price tag attached.  To cleanse the leper, Jesus had to die the death of the unclean.  He was strung up outside the city and accursed by all.  He became despised and rejected, but He did it to bring the outcasts in.

The bad news is, we’re all spiritual lepers.  The good news is, Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.  We can run to Christ – our Priest and Sacrifice.  We can say “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  And with that same heart-felt compassion, His response will be, “I am willing, be clean!”

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Leviticus 3:1-17

When we think of a “peace offering” we picture guilty husbands hastily purchasing flowers.  Or meek penitents bringing gifts to their fuming friends.  The one giving the peace offering feels dreadful.  The one to whom the offering is made is tapping their foot saying “This better be good.”  And maybe, just maybe, they can be bought off by the peace offering.

But that’s a world away from the biblical sense of a “peace offering”.  (See Leviticus 3:1-17; 7:11-21)

The peace offering was the crown of the five offerings laid out in Leviticus.  It wasn’t like the burnt offering, grain offering, sin offering or trespass offering.  In this offering, sins weren’t on the table. Only food.

Our guilt had been resolved through the blood-atonement which the LORD provided (Leviticus 17:11).  When the worshipper came to the peace offering – sins were far behind them.  No-one is buying off God here.  This is about cleansed worshippers wanting to draw near to the LORD.  It was a completely voluntary offering.  If they liked, the Israelites could pull up a chair to eat with the LORD.

You see this was the one offering in which the offerers shared.  It was a meal with God.

And that’s where the work of atonement is always heading.  God does not simply want to acquit sinners.  He wants to feast with them.  He doesn’t want to endure us on the outskirts of His presence.  He invites us to sit at table, to laugh and share and talk and eat.

The peace offering is not about us guiltily earning our way into God’s good books.  It’s about enjoying our at-one-ment.

If you’re a Christian, do you realise that you are not simply forgiven, not simply tolerated but actively loved and pursued by the LORD?  He did not give His own blood in order for us to remain strangers.  And He does not want ‘coffee buddies’.  He wants dinner guests.  He adopts us into the very heart of His family life.  The face to face for which we’ve been made is not any old intimacy – it’s table fellowship.

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  (Romans 5:1)

Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”  (Revelation 3:20)

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For more on the “peace offering” and other highlights from Leviticus, see these excellent talks.

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Leviticus 1:1-4; Ephesians 2:11-22

Can an ex-offender atone for his crimes? Can a sportswoman atone for her blunder?  Can a husband atone for his callous remark?

If we answer ‘yes’ it’s usually because we think that the guilty party can make amends. But the Bible has a fresh angle on the question of atonement.

Atonement is a word that was invented by William Tyndale for his 1526 New Testament translation.  It means exactly what it looks like – it’s about re-uniting God and man, so that they are “at one”.

So, what does it take to be “at one” with God Almighty?

We have already seen an early description of “atonement” in the Golden Calf incident.  Moses ascends the mountain saying,

“now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.”  (Exodus 32:30)

There he asks to be blotted out of the Father’s book so that his people will not (v32). Perhaps now is the time for that long-promised sacrifice from Genesis 22.  Perhaps Moses will be the sacrificial Lamb of God dying for his people.  But no.  It was not time for the mountaintop atonement.  And Moses was not to be the sacrifice.

The next time we read of “atonement” is in Leviticus, the book detailing the regulations for tabernacle worship.  49 times the word appears in Leviticus and almost always in the context of blood.  The tabernacle was many things – a portable tent, the dwelling place of the Glory of the LORD, a multi-media gospel presentation, a working model of how God and man can meet.  But there’s one thing the tabernacle definitely was: it was a slaughterhouse.

How many millions of gallons of animal blood were shed at the altar, as Old Testament worshippers were shown the cost of atonement?  But here is a key verse about that bloody atonement:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.  (Leviticus 17:11)

In these dramatizations of the future atonement, the LORD makes it clear that He gives the blood to make atonement for their sins.

And this is what is so different about the LORD.  Our sin does indeed demand blood.  We, who dwell in sin and death, cannot be at one with our God.  There is a reckoning for our sin.  But the LORD does not demand our blood.  Instead He provides blood.  The blood of a substitutionary sacrifice which He gives to us.  It’s the blood of another that makes atonement.

So over and over again the Israelites are being shown what atonement means.  I am guilty.  I am worthy of death.  But the LORD wants to be at one with His people.  So He provides the blood.  He pays the cost.  And every worshipper at that tabernacle should have looked forward with awe and gratitude to the Real Atonement.  All of this was pointing them to the time their LORD would come as a Lamb – the Lamb of God to atone for the sins of the world.

In the book, Atonement, by Ian McEwan, a girl makes a dreadful mistake for which she longs to make amends.  She desperately wants a happy ending where her sins are made up for and everyone can be “at one.”  But in McEwan’s vision, this ending is a fairytale, not reality.  Atonement just doesn’t happen in real life.  We make mistakes, people drift apart, things disintegrate and then we die.  That’s life… apart from Christ!

With Christ, however, atonement is a reality.  Not simply atonement with others – we can be “at one” with the living God!  None of our sins can ever prove too great an obstacle for this union.  At the cross, the ultimate offering has been made – not simply the blood of animals, not simply the blood of men, but the blood of God! (Acts 20:28)  If Christ stands between you and God, then nothing else does – no sins, no guilt, no shame.  Christ Himself is your peace, He makes you one with the Father of lights:

Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.  (Ephesians 2:13)

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Exodus 40:12-16

Federico Fellini has been called the ‘High Priest of Italian Cinema’.  Bill Hicks, ‘the High Priest of Stand-up Comedy’.  And Prince, ‘the High Priest of Funk, Soul and Rock n Roll’.

It’s the idea of being an authority.  One who mediates the genre out into the world.  They are the go-to person when it comes to their own speciality.

Well in the Bible, Aaron is appointed as High Priest of God. What an awesome honour!  What human being could possibly fulfil the role??

Surely not Aaron.  Not the one who presided over the Golden Calf debacle.  But astonishingly, this sinner is dressed up in the special robes and consecrated as God’s go-between.  How should we understand this?

Well it’s part of the elaborate, multi-media dramatizations of Old Testament worship.  When the Israelites were saved out of Egypt and brought to Mount Sinai, they received all sorts of representations of heavenly truth.  First they received the ten commandments – the Good Life intended for God’s son.  But that’s just a part of this model of ultimate reality.  Next come instructions about building a tabernacle.

This tent would be a portable model of heaven and earth in which spiritual truths are acted out.  Again and again Moses is told that these things are not the spiritual realities themselves – they are copies and patterns of heavenly things. (Exodus 25:9,40; 26:30)

Through the tabernacle, the people would see many things dramatized – the nature of God, heaven and earth, the problem of our estrangement from God, the cost of atonement and just how we get back into His presence.

Presiding over this earthly model was Aaron – the High Priest.  Of course, sinful Aaron was in no position to be God’s ultimate go-between.  But He was play-acting the role of One who the Israelites already knew.  Just as the divine Angel of the LORD – Christ – had brought the people from slavery to God Most High, so Aaron would perform the role of go-between.  And he would point the people to the future work of Christ when He would effect the ultimate mediation.

Let’s just think of one way that Aaron did this.  Consider his clothing, in particular his breastplate.  On his breastplate were precious stones which were engraved with the names of the children of Israel (Exodus 28:9).  Aaron carried the people on his heart.

Then, on the day of atonement (which we will consider shortly), Aaron made blood sacrifices, foreshadowing the cross.  He moved through the tabernacle to the inner sanctum, representing heaven.  And while he stands before the throne of God, he displays the blood and prays for the people.  Crucially, throughout this mediating work, he bears his people on his heart.

And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy place, for a memorial before the LORD continually.  (Exodus 28:29)

Everything he does, he does while carrying his people with him.  So it is with Christ.

Through all of Christ’s work through incarnation, cross, resurrection, ascension, even on into all eternity He carries His people on His heart.

Jesus didn’t just blaze a trail into heaven.  He took us with Him.  Whatever you are facing today, know this – you have a Friend in very high places.  And He has you on His heart.

As Charitie Bancroft has written so wonderfully:

“Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea.
A great high Priest whose Name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in Heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart.”

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Exodus 34:1-14

“Describe yourself” says the interviewer, with a glint in their eyes.

You really want the job.  How to sound humble but also omni-competent? “What to reveal about myself?” Probably the less the better.

“Why is he asking?” you wonder.  “Doesn’t my track record speak for itself?  Won’t he see pretty quickly who I really am?”

It can be a very awkward question.

But Moses has the nerve to ask it of God Most High.  Still on the top of mount Sinai, he asks the unseen LORD:

Please show me your glory (Exodus 33:18)

Glory eh?  What should we expect that to look like?  Dazzling special effects?  Breath-taking displays of raw power?  No, here is how God reveals His glory.  He responds,

“I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”  (Exodus 33:19)

This is the LORD’s glory.  Goodness, grace and mercy.  And it’s all summed up in His “name”.  His name is His divine character and it’s what the LORD promises to proclaim next time He visits Moses.

Well in Exodus 34 it happens.  The unseen LORD comes down to describe Himself – to proclaim His name.  He descends again to the top of Mount Sinai in a cloud,

and stood with Moses there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.  And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.  (Exodus 34:5-7)

Right there at the heart of God’s name – His character – is that lovely word “longsuffering.”  We have William Tyndale to thank for its entrance into the English language.  In translating Galatians 5:22 he rendered the Greek word makrothumia as “longsuffering” – a word that previously did not exist.  This “longsuffering” is one aspect of “the fruit of the Spirit” – that life that is birthed in the believer by the Spirit of Christ. Makrothumia means patiently bearing heat without disintegrating.  And it’s the same word that the ancient Greeks used when translating Exodus 34.

The original Hebrew phrase is actually two words: “long” and “nose”!  The nose (or nostrils) are associated with anger.  And so, as often as not, the phrase is rendered “slow to anger.”  But as someone with a considerable proboscis of his own, I think we should return to biblical roots and proclaim the great godliness of big noses.  I digress.

The Most High describes Himself as “long-nosed”.  Or, idiomatically, “longsuffering”.  He is merciful, gracious, forgiving.  The phrase “abounding in goodness and truth” might be translated “full of grace and truth.” These traits give us confidence.

But He also mentions His justice.  He won’t clear the guilty.  He will pay back iniquities.

So how do we put all this together?  What does it look like to be longsuffering but also to punish wickedness?  How do we know if we are recipients of His patience or His punishment?  And, more fundamentally, how do we know that God’s not doing what we do in job interviews?

There are plenty of gods out there and they all claim to be kind.  Plenty of religious texts speak of a merciful deity.  How can we believe this one?

Well Moses knows the name of the LORD.  He hasn’t just heard God speak His name.  He has seen the name in action.

Back in Exodus 23, God tells Moses about His Angel who He will send ahead of the people.  The Angel leads, commands and forgives the people all because the Father’s “name is in him.”  (Exodus 23:20-22)

The character of God Most High is perfectly expressed in His Son.  And Moses has seen that character because he has witnessed, first-hand, the saving acts of Christ. So after hearing the Father proclaim His name, Moses is overjoyed:

Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord I pray thee, go among us.  (Exodus 34:8-9)

Moses tells the Lord (the Father), he wants his Lord (the Son) to continue leading them.  The name he has heard, is the name he has seen in salvation, and he gladly bows to the gracious God he has met in Christ.

This, then, is how we can be assured of the character of God.  We see it in the saving acts of Christ.  God does not merely describe Himself, He sends Christ among us to ‘walk the talk.’

When we look at Christ crucified how can we possibly deny the longsuffering mercy of God. There on the cross, Jesus is patiently bearing the heat Himself. And at the same time He is revealing His determination to judge.  The name of God makes sense as we look to Christ.  The punishment and the patience come together.  And in the words of the Apostle John:

we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

Jesus is the very Character of God taking flesh.  And if we see Him for who He is, we too will bow to the ground like Moses and desire His company all our days!

Plenty of gods claim to be glorious.  But their glory doesn’t look like this.  Plenty of gods claim to be merciful.  But we’ve never seen the evidence.  With Jesus we get something very different.  In Jesus we have seen the character of Almighty God.  When we see His arms outstretched to the guilty, who can doubt the depths of His divine longsuffering?

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Exodus 33:7-23

Children love “staring competitions” with their parents.  But the “competition” is a front.  We know what the child wants, we know what the parent wants.  Face to face.

Or think of the long-distance relationship.  Lovers who are sick of letters and phone-calls.  They want face to face.

Or the misunderstandings of work colleagues, accusations escalating, emails flying.  What do they need to resolve it all?  Face to face.

There is something incredibly powerful about being face to face.  When someone draws their face near, perhaps they want to kiss you, whisper something, tell you a secret.

It speaks of closeness, transparency, openness, friendship, love.  There is knowing and being known.  Face to face.

In Exodus chapter 33 we read about Moses going into the tent of meeting at the foot of Mount Sinai and speaking with the LORD:

“The LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”  (Exodus 33:11)

This is incredible intimacy.  The LORD Almighty… face to face… as a man speaks to His friend.  Whatever “the image of God” means, this is its consummation: man and God in face-to-face fellowship.

Moses had this privilege intermittently and only for a matter of minutes.  Even so, these encounters had a remarkable effect on him.  His own face would radiate after “face to face” with the LORD.  When he went back to the people he would veil his face because they couldn’t bear to see that reflected glory fading away.  (Exodus 34:29-35)

But all of this sets us up for an encounter later on in the same chapter.  In Exodus 33, Moses is speaking to the LORD on top of the mountain and asks to see His glory (v18).  But in verse 20 He responds, “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.”  And again in verse 22 He says “my face shall not be seen.”

What is going on?  Is the LORD moody?  At sea level He’s friendly but at altitude, He becomes aloof?

No, the face-to-face LORD at the foot of Sinai is the Angel of the LORD who has been leading the people.  The unseen LORD on the mountain is God Most High.  To say it another way – the Son is the visible image of the invisible God.  And it’s God the Father with whom Moses converses on top of the mountain.

What is the topic of their conversation?  Well Moses asks the unseen LORD, “Who will go with the people?” (v12).  The Father replies:

My presence shall go with thee.  (Exodus 33:14)

“Presence” is literally the word for “face.”  The Father is saying “the Face-to-Face LORD will go with you.”  He is pledging the help of His Son, His Angel, His Presence – the LORD Jesus.  When Moses hears this news he is satisfied:

If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. (v15)

Give me Jesus or give me death!  Moses wants the Father’s Face.  And He has it in the Father’s Son – the Face-to-face LORD.

Jesus reveals the unknown God.  And always has done.  In Paul’s words, He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).

And at Christmas He revealed Himself, not just to Moses, but to the world.  Jesus is God’s Face turned towards us.

Now that He has come as Man, He offers us all an experience far superior to Moses’.  For Moses, face to face was a rare privilege.  But for those who look to Jesus now, we have a future promised whose very atmosphere is “face to face.”

The Apostle Paul writes that Christians will enjoy a “face to face” future that makes our experience now like “seeing through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Every kiss you’ve ever wanted, every affirmation you’ve ever craved, every relationship you’ve ever pursued, every longing you’ve ever felt – will be fulfilled when you’re face to face with Jesus.  And He, for His part, will say to His beloved, “It is so good to see you, let me get a good look at you.”  Face to face.

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Exodus 32:21-35

If a ploughman’s ox refuses to turn the way he wants, he calls the obstinate beast “stiffnecked.” Nine times in the Bible, that’s what the LORD calls His people.  The first occasion is in Exodus 32:

“I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked 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.”  (Exodus 32:9-10)

God’s anger is provoked by the people worshipping their new golden god.  As far as He is concerned, this idolatry is a matter of stubbornness – a refusal to be led.  In wilful disobedience a stiffnecked people go their own way and they court total annihilation from the LORD.  In His wrath He threatens their destruction.

But Moses intercedes for Israel, and stunningly, the LORD Almighty listens.  Moses reminds the LORD of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  “And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”  (Exodus 32:14)

Apparently wrath can be averted for stiffnecked sinners.  This is good news.  And the rest of the chapter shows how.

First of all Moses calls the priests to execute a judgement on the people.  The Levites pick up swords and kill the guilty (v28).  Levites have always been blood-thirsty men.  As Jacob prophesied about their tribe, “their swords are weapons of violence” (Genesis 49:5). And this violent act is their “consecration” to priestly duty (v29).  You might even say it’s their ordination.

These Levites became priests that day.  What a fearful thing it would be for the Israelites to come to these men when they sinned.  But that’s the drill.  At the tabernacle, the sinner would have to confess their stiffnecked ways to these violent men bearing swords.  And as their priest plunged that sword into the animal substitute, they’d recognise that this blood-shed was precisely what they deserved.

But secondly, even after this blood-shed, Moses realises there’s still a work of atonement to be performed:

Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin. (v30)

Here’s what Moses offers to the Father:

Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. (v32)

Moses offers to die in the place of the people.  He doesn’t offer the blood of goats or bulls.  He doesn’t offer the blood of the guilty.  He offers his own blood – the blood of the innocent, the blood of the people’s ruler.

Would Moses himself be the promised Lamb to be provided on the mountain to make atonement?  Genesis 22:1-14 has been promising just this atonement for centuries – the Lamb on the mountain as a burnt offering.  Would Moses be the One to make atonement?

No.  God Most High declines Moses’ offer.  Instead He reminds him of His Angel – the true Leader of the people (v34).  The true Warrior and Commander at their head was indeed going before them.  They must continue to wait for Him and to trust in Him.

One day He would descend from the heavenlies, the Divine Angel and Saviour; the True Priest for the people, the Atoning Lamb and the Ruler of rulers; the true Innocent.  It’s Christ who would be handed over to death by Levites, killed by piercings and blotted out of the Father’s book.

In this way would the true atonement be made.  In this way, ‘One greater than Moses’ would make intercession for stiffnecked rebels, like us.

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Exodus 32:1-20

How long does it take a nation to fall away from its spiritual heritage?

Well in Exodus 32 it’s been 50 days since the Israelites had arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai.  They had been redeemed from slavery, brought through the Red Sea and carried by the Angel of God on eagle’s wings. He has brought them to hear the voice of God Most High speaking the ten words.  And they all responded:

“All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.” (Exodus 24:3)

Well, with such assurances of the people’s moral resolve, Moses stays up on the mountain receiving instructions for the tabernacle.  And while Moses is away, the Israelites play.

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, 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 wot not what is become of him.  (Exodus 32:1)

How quickly they had forgotten the LORD Christ who had led them so faithfully.  And how soon they turned from God’s Presence to idols, breaking the very heart and foundation of the law.

Well, Aaron complies with the people’s wishes immediately. He compels the people to give towards this false god (verse 2).  This is in stark contrast to how money was raised for the tabernacle, where every donation was a free-will offering (e.g. Exodus 35:4-29).  But while true worship of the LORD is always free, false religion is always forced.

So, instead of being pressed into the LORD’s service, the goods they had taken from the Egyptians are made into a golden calf! (Exodus 3:22; 12:36)

Why a calf?  Psalm 106:19-20 clarifies that this is the calf of an ox.  Now when you put Ezekiel 1:10 and Ezekiel 10:14 together you see that cherubs are like oxen.  And we know that the devil is a cherub (Ezekiel 28:14-19).  Here’s the shock, Israel has not just descended into any old false worship.  This is devil worship!

That’s not to say they were consciously invoking Satan’s name.  In fact they liberally sprinkled their calf-worship with mentions of “the LORD”.  But this only shows that saying “Lord, Lord” doesn’t mean a whole lot.  You can worship Satan ‘in Jesus’ name.’

What would Moses do when he found out?  Moses, the righteous ruler dwelling in heavenly glory.  How will he respond to his sinful people?

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. 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. And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?”

And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 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.’ 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.”  (Exodus 32:19-24)

Justifications for sin are always ridiculous and Aaron’s is no exception. Moses responds thunderously with righteous anger.  The law is hurled at a sinful people and tomorrow we’ll see the outcome.

But compare Moses with Christ.

Christ is the original Righteous Ruler of the people.  He too dwelt in heavenly glory and His people gave up waiting and turned to idols.  But when the time came, the Father did not send a thunder-bolt.  He sent His Son.  As a baby.  And Jesus, when He came in the flesh, did not hurl the law at us.  Though we deserve nothing but condemnation, He answers us with mercy.  He doesn’t force us to drink down judgement.  He offered us His own life-blood in salvation.

And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.  (John 1:17-18)