God’s Judgment and Hope in the Wilderness

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Andrew Wilson: Yeah, we’re going to be looking today at God’s mercy and judgment in the wilderness. So His mercy and His justice in the wilderness. So you could you grab your Bible, and since Exodus 32, Exodus, chapter 32, I’m going to read the whole of it. It’s quite a long chapter. But I trust that you’re here to hear the Word of God, this matters more, as I’m sure we all know than anything I will say after it. But I want to walk through the whole chapter, and then draw out some connections and some themes, which I hope will help us hear what God has to say, from his word to us. But Exodus, Exodus chapter 32. And beginning at verse one. When people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said, up, make us God’s who shall go before us. As for this, Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what’s become of him. So Erin said to them, take off the rings of gold, that in the ears of your wives, your sons, your daughters, and bring them to me. So all the people took off the rings of gold, that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and fashion it with a grieving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, these are your gods, though Israel who brought you up out of the land of Egypt’s when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made proclamation and said, tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early the next day, and offered burns, offerings, and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. And the Lord said to Moses, Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves, they’ve turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them, they’ve made to themselves a golden calf, and they’ve worshipped it. And they’ve sacrificed it to it. And they’ve said, these are your gods, who Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, I’ve seen this people, and behold, it’s a stiff necked people. Now, therefore, let me alone, that my Roth may burn hot against them, and I may consume them, and in order that I may make a great nation of you. But most Moses implored the Lord and said, Oh, Lord, what? Why does your Roth burn hotter against your people whom you’ve brought out of the land of Egypt with great power? And a mighty hands? Why should the Egyptians say, with evil intent, did he bring them out to kill them in the mountains, and consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from your burning anger, and relent from this disaster against your people? Remember, Abraham, Isaac and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, I will multiply your offering, as the your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I’ve promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever. And the Lord relented from the disaster that he’d spoken of bringing on his people. Then Moses turned, and he 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 the back, they were written, the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people, as they shouted, he said to Moses, there’s a noise of war in the camp. But he said, It’s not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear. 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 hand and broke them at the foot of the mountain, he took the calf that they’ve made, and he burn it with fire, and he ground it to powder, and he scattered it on the water, and he made the people of Israel drink it. And Moses said to Aaron, what did these 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 God’s will go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what’s become of him. So I said to them, well, let any you’ve got gold, take it off. So they gave it to me and I threw it in a fire and out came this calf. And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose, that Aaron had let them broke loose to the derision of their enemies, then Moses stood in the case of the camp and said, who was on the Lord’s sides, come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered around him, and he said to them, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, put you will shorten your side each of you and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you shall kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor. And the sons of Levi did, according to the Word of Moses, and that day, about 3000 Men of the people fell. And Moses said, Today you’ve been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day. The next day, Moses said to the people, you you’ve sinned, a great sin. And now I will go up to the Lord, perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. So Moses returned to the Lord and said, Alas, this people have sinned a great sin, they’ve made for themselves gods of God, but now if you’ll forgive their sin, but if not, please block me out of the book that you’ve written. But the Lord said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out in my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I’ve spoken to you. Behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them. And then the Lord sent a plague upon the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made. This is the Word of God. Now, in many ways, the golden calf story is a classic, full story. And if we’ve read much biblical theology, we’ll know this is like the kind of fall of Israel in many ways analogous to the fall in the garden. And the stories run in parallel to each other, that God makes a covenant with His people, complete with blessings, instructions and warnings. He does that in many, many in many ways in the garden, and he does it here with a with Israel, just up the mountain, as we’ve heard, over the last yesterday evening, in particular, from JD and Megan. And then temptation comes to God’s people in the form of an animal in the garden, it’s a serpent. And here it’s the golden cart is a call for an animal, a beast, there’s a best deal temptation, in both stories. And then there is a counterfeit covenant meal, which is offered as if it’s meant to be worshipful to God, but we know it isn’t. It’s actually a sign of sellout, compromised idolatry. The fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil replaces the fruit of life. This sitting down to eat and drink and rising up to play replaces the covenant meal, that leg talked us through last night that they should have been eating that kind of a meal. And instead, they’re eating this one. Both times there’s a, I’m taking an eating something I shouldn’t be, instead of the meal God wanted me to have which brings life. Then after that, on being challenged, the representative human who’s responsible for guarding the people, whether it be the garden, or the sanctuary, Adam and Erin, they both blame the other people. diadems cases it was the woman you gave me. And in Aaron’s case, it’s just I don’t know, I just chucked it in the fire and the calf came out what what do you want me to do? The people then face the consequences of their sin in judgment. And interestingly, the first real world consequence you can see in both stories in Genesis three, four, and in Exodus 32, is fratricide. It leads brothers to kill each other. Now, obviously, the two stories are different because Cain is killing Abel, not because God has commissioned into anything, but actually this, this sense that when you lose relationship with God, brothers start killing each other is the theme that comes often in Scripture and the idea of brotherly strife as a result of sin is obviously a massive theme in the book of Genesis, Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, so on. And then finally, we hear in the stories of prayer, or a promise, in both stories, that God will save his people from their sins, and crushed the festival source of temptation in the end. Of course, in the case of the garden, the crushing of the serpent is going to wait a long while. But the golden calf doesn’t even make it to the end of the chapter before it gets crushed, and ground to powder as the best your source of temptation that it is. Scripture is great, isn’t it? Why these stories often reinforce one another and help you see this is that that’s about this. And false stories like that are an all too familiar part of the biblical story. And they we regularly see I thought we were there. I thought this was going to be the moment we It’s settled, and God established rule and no more strife and suffering and then another fall, and we have loads of them. You think that the covenant God has made will resolve the problem of human sinfulness once and for all. And then Noah gets drunk. Or and then David murders Uriah, and steals his wife. or And then Peter denies Jesus and runs away.

mediately after covenants are sealed or demonstrated in Scripture, you so often get a fool that says this ultimately More is still needed if God is going to do something bigger and deeper than that, in order to resolve what’s happened here. And the same is true, of course, in this story, they’re having heard this glorious covenant revealed on the mountain, and they’ve been invited up to, to feast in God’s presence and behold the throne and see up on what’s underneath his feet and eat and drink in front of him. And even after that, no, there’s a fall. There’s a fall there’s judgment, there’s justice. Having said that, for a chapter that revolves around judgment as much as this one does, like failure and judgment, everywhere, you idolatrous sacrifices, broken tablets, Levitical massacre, a blotting out of books and then a plague that that’s what the story is about. But given all of that there is actually an awful lot of hope. In the wilderness, which is obviously our theme for the conference. There is a lot of hope in this story. And I want us to see it because in an in and around the judgment and the failure, which is the lives we lead the things we are surrounded by so much of our time we we see in and through those terrible, bleak, awful, rebellious, idolatrous, judgment filled moments, wow, look at the hope that God is bringing and the way I want to do that, as we look at it is, first of all, to consider the bad news. And then to consider the good news. And then to consider the best news as we walked through the text and see the different dynamics of hope that God brings. There is bad news here, no doubt there is good news. And then there’s the best news of the end. But I want to start from the bad news. And the bad news. This is not the bad news that most of us would expect, I suppose. But the bad news in this story is that you become like what you worship. You become like what you worship, we shape our idols, and then our idols shape us, as Winston Churchill might have said, I think he’s learned about buildings. But he wouldn’t have said it like that he would have said, like, we shape it. And then afterwards, it goes from shape off or words to that effects. But that’s the dynamic in this story. You build an idol. And then the idol builds you, you fashion something to serve, and then you find yourself serving it. And obviously, that principle is explicitly taught in the Bible, we know that. And one example of many Psalm 115 verse for their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands, those who make them become like them, and so to all who trust in them. So we know that we know that’s a thing we know. That’s the way scripture talks about idolatry and what happens to you when you make an idol. But it’s, I don’t think it’s illustrated anywhere, as tragically and definitively as it is here. Israel makes an idol out of earrings. This is an earring God they built verses two and three superficially impressive, sparkly, but utterly unable to hear or see or speak or act or do anything. And they’ve they’ve become, they quickly become just like that. Immediately is Israel has made a God out of earrings. Israel has also become superficially impressive, but unable to see speak, act or do anything. Israel becomes unresponsive. No, almost as soon as she’s made the golden calf Israel and even Aaron actually become unresponsive, forgetful, shiny on the outside, dead on the inside. You can see I happen in the text. Israel becomes Bastille like, like a big animal like a big, sort of silent, new, unable to reason on thinking beast. verse seven says, It’s like Israel is only able to sit, stand up, eat, drink, play. It’s like Israel is just sitting there like a giant cow.

You see, the way he’s picturing Israel is as if it’s to help us see us become like what you worship. You worship to call for now you become a kind of being you just sit, eat, drink, stand up, play a bit, go back, sit, eat, you’re like a cow. You’ve turned into the thing you made. And if you make a god in your image, you very quickly become more and more like that thing. It’s a terrifying judgment. And then in verse nine, we have the kicker, which is that God speaks of Israel and says, Israel is a stiff necked people. They build a golden calf with a stiff neck and a hard hearts. And they become a people with a stiff neck and hard hearts. They become like what they worship. And so to you, and so do I. And there’s bad news for every idolaters in fact, and Aaron has become so passive, that he’s lost all agency and genuinely thinks, I mean, I know it’s a kind of comedy excuse when he says I chucked it in the fire. I mean, I read it and you all laugh. I throw it in the fire and outcomes the cough It’s such a terrible excuse. But I think it’s intended to teach us not just a bad excuse, but that Aaron has become passive to the point that he really, he almost believes it, he almost died and I just chucked it in this thing happen. I’ve lost my agency, I’ve, I’ve lost the thing. I’m supposed to be leading the people, but I’ve turned into sort of passive subjects, a passive object rather of the desires of other people just like the golden calf. So Aaron, the priest, and Israel, the nation, make the calf and then they kind of turn into it. Our brothers and sisters, it’s so disturbing how idols do that they make you more like themselves as you stare at them as you honor them as you venerate them as you think that’s the good life. This is what you turn into that thing. It’s frightening. And it’s not just true in Scripture is true now. And have you read them Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness I hadn’t read if I know some of us read it in school in Britain. We don’t really but it’s a story set in sort of the ivory trade in the Belgian Congo. And famously now is this sort of the same story as Apocalypse Now. And so if you see an Apocalypse Now, you know how Marlon Brando Brando looks at the end of Apocalypse Now completely, sort of white bald head just going for horror. Thorough. The reason he does is because what Conrad does in his novel, which the film is based on, is to tell the story about how people are so rapacious and desperate for ivory that they will do terrible, terrible unspeakable things to the Congolese and others in Central Africa. And what happens is they do Connor has this amazing description of Kurt’s the Marlon Brando guy at the end of the novel, where he describes him as sort of white shiny head and was completely like ivory. That these people have given themselves so much to the pursuit of ivory to killing elephants, getting more and more of it so they can make more and more money. Their greed has overtaken them so much. And they’ve idolized ivory so much that they actually look like a tusk. They look like they’re made of ivory, their heads, almost like polished white. And so if you watch Apocalypse Now, and many of us won’t want to but if you do, and you see that you think that’s a statement of the fact that those who worship idols become like them. If you obsess over over your life, you end up turning into it is what Conrad is cleverly doing with that story. And it happens in all sorts of situations like Eustace turning into a dragon might be more familiar example to many of us in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Exactly the same thing happens on obsessing over gold and thinking I would like the amount of stuff and Lutz that this dragon has. And then he becomes what he worships. You see everywhere. For a contemporary example, consider how our generation is becoming like these, how much you become like what you serve, you can you and I, our generation, assimilate vast amounts of information at breakneck speed. And we move incredibly quickly. And we can be everywhere at once. And yet somehow also, nowhere. At once. We become increasingly disembodied, we become incapable of sustained attention just like this does. We have multiple dozens of apps open in our heads at once, which means it’s very difficult for us to be here without thinking about that as well. And wondering, is there another app that’s burning up energy in the background here, we have experienced a lack of work play boundaries, we have a lack of focus on the person in front of us because there’s lots of other things running at the same time, we continually distracted, restlessly, anxious, very efficient, and yet a lot smaller than we used to be. We become like what we worship. It’s terrifying. For idolaters we shape our idols, and thereafter, they shape us. We become like what we worship. That’s the bad news. The good news is, we become like what we worship. This wonderful, we become like what we worship. If, if instead of worshiping the golden calf, and becoming best, you’ll only be able to eat and drink and rise and play, and hardhearted and sniffling. But instead of doing that, we worship the God of Israel, the God of the burning bush, the I Am ya Jiawei, Jehovah, we instead of worshipping the cow worship the real God, if instead of worshiping the earring, God, we worship the earring gods, we become like him instead. And that’s what happens to Moses in this passage is beautiful. He spent 40 days on the mountain, in the presence of the real gods, the Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness is Exodus 34, verse 60. He hasn’t quite had that name revealed yet, but he will and we’re okay jumping in the script I trust is no spoilers here. But Moses, Moses has spent 40 days in His presence. And we’ve heard next to nothing about Moses in the last seven or eight chapters. But we can see in this passage, that his time on the mountain in the presence of God has really done in the power of good. He’s become like who he worships. Moses has become not in a perfect way, but in a very profound way. He has become merciful, and gracious, and slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness to some degree. Yet he still doesn’t leave the guilty and punished. When that comes through the story in a whole bunch of different ways, which the writer wants us to see, I’m trying to persuade you of that. So when the Lord first talks about what Israel is done, it says his Roth burns hot in verse 10. So look at verse 10, his Roth burns hot. Then when Moses sees what the people have done, obviously, the Lord knows it before Moses does. So the Lord sees it, his Roth burns, Moses sees it. First 19, his Roth burns hot, exactly the same phrase. When Aaron sees Moses, he says, Let the Wrath of My Lord burn hearts, as in, I know you’re mad, but please hear me out. In other words, God’s reaction to the sin and Moses, his reaction to the sin are identical to the extent that Aaron can tell that Moses has reacted just like God, the righteous doing that on purpose, so that we can see it. If you spend time in the presence of God, your attitude to the sin and idolatry that surrounds you becomes analogous to have a peace with the reaction that God has to sin and idolatry. And that’s great, because you are becoming like the one you worship. I think the same point comes through the escalating judgments in the story, which, for contemporary people are really hard to hear. Like some of us did not get ordained, we got ordained, but we didn’t get ordained by having to go out and kill people that it’s a very strange experience for us to read this. But actually, the judgments make the point that Moses his reaction, of not leaving the guilty unpunished is of a peace with the Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious, and yet who does not spare the guilty. And were intended to see the connections because the first judgments in the story in verse 20, is Mote comes from Moses, he crushes the gods, and he makes the people drink it, sprinkles it in the water and says, You’ve got to drink this. That’s the first judgment. But it’s that’s just Moses. The second judgment comes from the Lord via Moses, which is command in the Levites, to kill their neighbors. So you look at verse 27, that is instituted through Moses, but it’s at God’s instigation. And then the third and final judgment, which is the plague in verse 35, comes directly from the Lord. So we’re seeing these judgments kind of escalate, in a sense. So we have a judgment that comes at the Moses almost on his own initiative going, I am furious with you, this is the consequence, then you have a God, a judgment that comes from God through Moses, and then you have one that just comes straight from God. But all three judgments are consistent in their horror, at sin, their condemnation of idolatry and their refusal to let the guilty go unpunished. Reactions of Moses and God are the same in their spirit in this chapter, because Moses has become like the one who spent 40 days up the mountain worshiping and adoring and although not perfectly, so as we only need to read on in this book, and certainly the Book of Numbers, we’ll find out Moses, we’re not done like there’s a lot more conforming to the likeness of God that needs to still happen. But that said, Moses has become like the one he worships. And that’s wonderful news in his attitude towards sin.

When we make a God in our own image, we do leave the guilty and punished Aaron did Israel do? People who make gods in their own image today do it all the time. So one of the most obvious features of an idol purporting to be the real God is He leaves the guilty and punished. That’s why the prophets are always saying, You’re never going to get justice if you don’t worship the real God, because the fake god you’ve made up will always favor the powerful, and he still does. But when you worship the real cause, he brings justice to the people who need it, he holds people to account, he says, You cannot do that. And if you do these other consequences, be the Levites with a sword or be thy God with a plague. But happily for us, the good news is that you don’t only become like the one you worship in the sense that you feel his anger at sin. That’s important. But that’s not the only way in which Moses has become like the one he worships in this story. He’s is filled with Roth, about idolatry, but he’s also filled with mercy, and grace and steadfast love, I would say, and covenant faithfulness in this story. So look at verse 12. Moses, his initial appeal when he hears that God is going to wipe them out and make a nation out of him, Moses, which you and I might have been quite inclined to take that right. Oh, yeah, fine. Start with me. I’ll be the new Abraham around here. Great. Moses doesn’t. He says, verse 12. Turn from your burning anger and relent from the disaster against your people. In other words, Lord, be merciful to them. No, this is what they might deserve. But please be merciful. Moses is appealing for divine mercy because he has become like God, and has gotten mercy for the people even though he’s furious with them as well. That’s how you can tell someone’s been in the presence of God. They don’t just, they don’t just hate sin. They love people they’re merciful to people they plead is that their enemies not be destroyed, but be saved by the mercy of God. And Moses has become like that he’s spent time in God’s presence. And his first instinct is no, don’t wipe them out. In fact, take me out instead, I want them to be saved. I know this is awful, they need judgment, some of them are going to need to die. But Lord, please show mercy to these people who you called. When people spend time in God’s presence, they resembled the Lord merciful. So let me ask you this, does living in a hyper connected world filled with social media and awareness of other people’s errors and evils? Has it made you less merciful? He finding that the world is forming you to be a less merciful person? Has it made you less likely to correct your opponents with gentleness and more likely to completely blow your lid? Or to publicly reveal them and lead other people to cancel them? Or has it made you more likely to ask God to turn from His burning anger against their sin? And if the answer is anything like the first that’s not a that’s not to condemn anybody, it’s simply to say this, this doesn’t come from being in being on this. It doesn’t come from the world doesn’t come from awareness of more stuff that’s going on. It actually comes from spending time, worshiping for none of us are going to spend 40 days eating nothing and drinking nothing up a mountain to commune with God. But when we commune with God, in whatever form that takes, we come back from the experience as Moses had. merciful, gracious we spend time in the presence of God and we become like him. And we need a generation of merciful men and women. But that doesn’t happen overnight. It happens as we worship and adore the one who is boundless in mercy. And then as we do, just as Israel that comes like the calf when they worship it, Moses becomes like the Lord when he worships him.

Speaker 1
Who could imagine? So great. See, wha Ha, curved father, such boundless grace.

Andrew Wilson
He marveled at the mercy of God. And it changes your heart towards other people and makes you merciful to them. But it’s not just the mercy and the wrath of Moses has got he’s also got a passion for God to be faithful, abounding and faithfulness to his covenant. Right? So verse 13, remember, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob Your servants to whom you swore, I’m asking you, Lord, to be faithful to the covenant that you made. Moses, his zeal for the covenant, Moses, his zeal for God, to be abounding in steadfast love or truthfulness or faithfulness, that come from his time in the presence of God. In fact, I think you can even go further and say that Moses has not only become abounding in faithfulness, and mercy and indignation at sin, so as not to leave the guilty and punished, he has also become gracious and compassionate, and slow to anger. Because his response in verse 30, is to say to the people, listen, you’ve sinned a great sin, perhaps I can make atonement for you. He’s filled with the desire, he loves the people so much, that he wants to go and atone for them, to intercede for them, to plead for them and mediate for them as again, we saw the other day. And then he turns to God and says, Lord, forgive them their sin. And if not blocked me out of the book you’ve written, I would rather die on behalf of them that they might go free. So although the story starts with God’s saying, are brought the people out and choose you, Moses, Moses says, I don’t want that, Lord, I want you to block me out and say to people, he’s become merciful and gracious, to the degree to a limited degree, right? And he’s not become God. We know we’re not going there. But he said, I’ve become like the one I watched it, because that’s what happens. That’s the nature of idolatry. And it’s the nature of worship as well. Praise God. Moses is now so committed in love to his people, that he is prepared to substitute himself for them, which you might even describe as abounding in Phys. Ed, in steadfast love. Moses has become like what he worships not perfectly, not permanently. But his love for Israel and his anger at idolatry. And his commitment to God’s covenant promises is so great that He will do anything. Even like the apostle Paul say, I would rather be cursed if they could get saved. He will do anything to save them. So the bad news is, you and I become like what we worship but the good news is you and I become like what we worship We also, who with unveiled face, reflect the Lord’s glory, of being transformed into His likeness with ever increasing glory that goes up and up and up. And all this comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. That’s the good news. Is that good news? I can’t see many of you, I imagine you think it’s good news. So we have bad news in this story, and we have good news. But it’s not actually the best news. The bad news and the good news are both that you become like the one you worship. The best news is, the one you worship has become like you the one you wish it has become like you. Because this passage is nothing if not a beautiful picture of the work of Christ. The people sin, they make a substitute for God, and they rightly incur the wrath and righteous judgment of God. But God becomes a substitute for them, and turns the expressions of wrath and judgment on their heads. This is what God God does in Christ. So instead of an idolatrous God, being crushed and poured out and given to the people to drink, we have the real God, Christ Himself, being crushed for our iniquities and being poured out unto death and being given for his people to eat and drink. Hey, Take, eat me, Drink Me, I’ve been crushed. And I’ve been given to you as the true covenant meal that your idolatry will always lead you away from but which I come to restore. Instead of a day of judgment, in which the Levites begin their priestly ministry, by taking out their swords and striking their brothers with judgment so that 3000 People die. We have the day of Pentecost, where our brothers the apostles begin the apostolic ministry by taking out the sword of the Spirit, and striking their brothers with it so that 3000 people are saved. In this text, Moses mediates and intercedes for the people. And he offers atonement and he asks to take the consequences instead of them blocked me out. And God says, no, no, no, most of you, you’re great. In fact, I’d be prepared to restart the nation with you but you’re not the mediator they need. Conduit sorry. When he sends a plague and brings destruction upon the people, because Moses is mediation and intercession, though valuable and beautiful in its way, he’s just not enough. And God says, No. But when Christ comes, as the perfect mediator between heaven and earth, the same question is asked, Lord, I will be blotted out, crushed, poured out, in order that they might go free. And God says, Yes. God says, Yes, Moses, your mediation was not perfect. My son, your mediation is perfect, and his intercessory work is successful. It’s effective, he does prevail, even as Moses is praying, and God is saying, I still gotta bring judgment. Jesus comes in, He intercedes, but his mediation is so effective, that the plague is not just averted, the plague of God’s wrath falls on him. Instead, his atonement is sufficient, as Moses later does in the book of Numbers, and Eric with along with Aaron, that most that Jesus stands in between the living and the dead, and the plague is stopped, the judgment of God lands on him instead. And as a result, salvation is the cure for every single person who’s written in the Lamb’s Book. And the book of Revelation can’t get over it and keeps going back. This put these people they’re never going to get blotted out on the book. They’re never gonna have to go to Golden State, you know what water I’d better be blotted out because all this sin is so egregious, let me be brought it out for them. It’s like, No, Jesus has done that. You got it covered. Jesus has been effectively brought it out for that moment, a terrible moment, on Good Friday, but even as he was you and I know we’re never gonna get scrubbed. No tip x in heaven, removing books, removing people from books, is completely secure for all these names are there and brothers and sisters. It is a beautiful reality that we become like what we worship, just as it’s a scary reality, that we become like what we worship, but the gospel is more than that. The gospel is that the one we worship has become like us, and he has nailed this. His mediation is perfect, it is successful and you are secure in his arms.

Even in the darkest moment, to this point of Israel story, there is hope in the wilderness. Let’s pray.

Father, we are grateful, beyond measure your gift of the sun to ask your gift of the Spirit, to speak to us in this room, supply scripture and the power of the gospel to the ordinary situations of life in Idaho or Tennessee or wherever it is, we’ve come from you. We’re so grateful that you are present. We’re so grateful for your fatherhood over us. We’re so grateful that we have not just had our sins scrubbed. But we’ve been adopted into a family. We’ve been written in a book, we’ve been given the gift of everlasting life, and we’ve been assured that those things will happen by your Spirit within us. Thank you, that justice never gets compromised, but the Mercy always comes. We’re so grateful. And we stand to worship you because we love you. And we want to become more like you. In Jesus name. Amen.