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Thank you, sir, for your kind remarks. It's been a pleasure to be with you here through these weeks. Thank you who have come regularly and persistently. Thank you for not complaining, uh, because I've made you work so hard. Congratulations on your courage being here this evening. When so many people have hard duties filling Christmas stockings with the approach of Christmas, I do trust that your stocking will be no less full because you've taken an hour off from such duties to attend this meeting this evening. Shall we read from the book of Exodus once more? The book of Exodus in chapter thirty three.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, depart, go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I swear unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it. And I will send an angel before thee, and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, for I will not go up in the midst of thee, for thou art a stiff-necked people, lest I consume thee in the way. When the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned, and no man did put on him his ornaments.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, you are a stiff-necked people. If I go up in the midst of thee for one moment, I shall consume thee. Therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee. And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Horeb onward. Now Moses used to take the tent and to pitch it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone which sought the Lord went out unto the tent of meeting, which was without the camp.
And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tent, that all the people rose up and stood, every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses until he was gone into the tent. And it came to pass, when Moses entered into the tent, the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tent, and the Lord spake with Moses. And all the people saw the pillar of cloud stand at the door of the tent, and all the people rose up and worshiped, every man at his tent door. The Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend, and he turned again into the camp.
But his minister Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tent. And Moses said unto the Lord, See, thou sayest unto me, bring up this people, and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy ways, that I may know thee to the end that I may find grace in thy sight, and consider that this nation is thy people.
And he said, my presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. For wherein now shall it be known that I have found grace in thy sight, I and thy people? Is it not in that thou goest with us, so that we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth. And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. And he said, show me, I pray thee, thy glory.
And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, Thou canst not see my face, for man shall not see me and live. And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock, and it shall come to pass while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock and will cover thee with my hand until I have passed by. And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back, but my face shall not be seen.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Who thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and I will write upon the tables the words that were upon the first tables which thou breakest. And be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me on the top of the mount. No man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount. Neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. He hewed two tables of stone like unto the first, and Moses rose up early in the morning and went up unto Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him, and he took in his hand two tables of stone.
The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord, and the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy 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, upon the third and upon the fourth generation. And Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.
And he said, if now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray thee, go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance. And he said, behold, I make a covenant before all thy people. I will do marvels such as have not been wrought in all the earth, nor in any nation, and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the Lord, for it is a terrible thing that I do with thee. Verse twenty seven: And the Lord said unto Moses, Write these words, for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.
And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He did neither eat bread nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. And it came to pass when Moses came down from the Mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come nigh him.
And Moses called unto them, and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him. And Moses spake to them, and afterward all the children of Israel came nigh, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. And when Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face. But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off until he came out. And he came out and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded. The children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone.
And Moses put the veil upon his face again until he went in to speak with him. Just a few verses from the New Testament as commentary upon what we have read. The second epistle of Paul to the Corinthians and chapter three. Two Corinthians three and verse seven: But if the ministration of death, written and engraven on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face, which glory was passing away, how shall not rather the ministration of the Spirit be with glory?
Verse twelve: Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech, and are not as Moses, who put a veil upon his face, that the children of Israel should not look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away, but their minds were hardened, for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remaineth unlifted, which veil is done away in Christ. But unto this day, whensoever Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart, whensoever it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
That we all, with unveiled face, reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit. May that same spirit use God's word for that transformation in all our hearts. Last time we were considering together the sin of Israel when they made the golden calf, when they fell into grievous idolatry, when instead of the living God as their goal and their guide, they made to themselves a substitute God to go before them, and took their earrings and made them into a golden calf and danced and played before their idol, and said, these are thy gods that brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
We considered how on that occasion God became exceedingly wroth with his people, as no wonder it was when God had redeemed them and redeemed them for this express purpose that he might bring them to himself and that they should live for him. Then those people should turn aside from him who had redeemed them, and so wander in heart and memory from him as to believe that it was this god of gold that had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and that they should serve this god of gold as their goal and the object of all their worship, and propose hereafter to bend all their energies and make all their way to follow that God of gold, making it their chief ambition and their chief guide.
God, we found, was angry beyond measure. Now this evening we turn to the brighter side of this episode. We are to consider the reprieve that God granted to this people, owing largely to the intercessions of Moses, his servant. We began indeed on our last occasion to consider how Moses won for the people this reprieve from God and opened up for them the possibility that instead of dying forthwith in the wilderness, they should be allowed to survive and to go forward and to make further progress before their day of end should come.
Moses began by his intercession. Before anything else should happen, before anything else should be done to the people, before even they had been made aware of their sin and been brought to contrition and repentance, we found that Moses began his intercessions before God. When God threatened to remove those people and to destroy them, and offered to Moses that God would make of Moses a people in their place, Moses refused to abandon his people Israel, refused to be separated from them, stood solidly with them in their sorry plight, and besought of God that God would spare them.
We found in his intercessions a picture of the intercessions of our blessed Lord. We exalted ourselves in the words of Hebrews three to remember and to consider the high priest and apostle of our confession, gone up the mountain as Moses went up the mountain, now standing in the presence of God where we cannot see him. We exhorted ourselves nevertheless to consider him being faithful to us this very moment. Remind ourselves that because he abides faithful, he is able to save us to the uttermost.
Moses, therefore, having c- uh, c- c- received from God the pardon that Israel needed, proceeded to hasten down the mount to deal with Israel. And it is at that point that we take up the story this evening. And if at the end of our last study you were impressed by the tender-heartedness of Moses, as he stood pleading for Israel with God, then now you must steel yourself to find that Moses is a man of granite, a man of impeccable sternness, and as he comes down to this mountain, see his way with Israel, his erring people, Israel.
Taking the two command- the two tables of the commandment, he smashed them in their presence on the ground. A violent thing to do indeed with tablets that had been written with the very finger of God. But it was no use playing about now. Israel, somehow or other, must be brought to realize what a sin it is that they are doing. He must strip from them the illusion that they are suffering under. Did you not hear them just now, so sunk in the folly and the fatuousness of their disobedience and idolatry, that they have put this golden calf upon its perch? A golden calf made of earrings, if you please, and Aaron of all people, supposed priest of the Lord, is encouraging the people to worship the image, saying tomorrow is a feast of the Lord.
Will Aaron do it indeed with his ceremonial lo- robes and official, uh, stole and cassock? Will he, in the name of God, indeed so confuse the people's mind as to think that they can hold idolatry with that one hand and christen it with the name of God on the other. And it will require some stern and some straight talking. Moses takes the com- these tables of the commandments written with the finger of God and smashes them on the ground. That is what Israel have done. He will bring home to them their first and grievous thing, in that they have despised the word of the Lord.
And tables written with the finger of God and words spoken by the inspiration of God, yea, their very first commandment have they broken. And he will break the tables in their eyes. You see, it is a curious thing about idolatry that it never likes to be called idolatry. Indeed, there are some curious forms of unbelief that, uh, do not care to be counted unbelief. For many a man in our modern age has been cajoled into thinking that he can still profess faith in God's holy word, yet disagree with the holy apostles, yet disagree with the Lord Jesus.
I remember coming across one such young man at one stage. I was told, when I was asked, uh, to meet him, that this was a lad he brought up in a Covenanter class, or was it a Crusader? I forget now. Converted to the Lord, living valiantly for him, and now determined that he would give his life to the Lord. So not knowing anything better to do, he decided to go out to a university and read theology. And to a university he went and read theology. But the particular brand of theology that he read in this particular university was as modernist and idolatrous as you could find any.
And when at length I met this lad, he told me straight, no, he didn't believe in the deity of Christ, and uh... yet he was still a Christian. He didn't believe in the, the i- i- i- in taking the Bible literally. He said, you see, for instance, you take that bit in the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus, uh, said, uh, to the Sadducees, don't you remember what God said to Moses at the burning bush? I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, and therefore there is such a thing as a resurrection, and all the dead live to God. Said my young friend, you know, that's nonsense, isn't it?
That verse from Exodus doesn't prove what Matthew says it does prove. I said, is that so, my lad? Well, I said, tell me then, when our blessed Lord Jesus used that verse as evidence for the resurrection, which way round was it according to you? Was it that Jesus Christ was ignorant and didn't know what he was saying, and that the verse, um, doesn't mean what Christ said it means, so that Jesus Christ was an ignorant, uh, and incapable preacher? Or was it that our Lord Jesus Christ knew that the verse didn't mean what he said it means, and nevertheless used it, and that makes him out to be a deliberate fraud.
Which was it, young man? Oh, he said, I don't care what it is. I don't believe it anyway. I said, young gentleman, when you stand one of these days before God's throne, and you were asked why didn't you believe, will you tell him straight? That Jesus Christ you found wasn't true. He brushed my arguments aside. You see, he had been taught that Jesus Christ, when he humbled himself and became man, emptied himself of all his divine knowledge, and therefore was as ignorant as any other man was ignorant.
Oh, it won't do, will it? Let men, if they will, go off into such apostate unbelief, but then let them have the intellectual honesty to recognize what they do, and openly to confess that they have abandoned all faith in the word of God as the inspired word of God. Instead of trying to do the spiritual split, and on the one side profess that they have faith in the Bible as God's word, and on the other sense, and on the other side, deny it. So Moses, then we find, broke the tables of the covenant.
And not only that. Now we read that next that Moses came to the old idol, and he took it, and he ground it to powder, and he stowed it on the water, and he made the Israelites drink the water in which he had mixed the dust of their golden idol. I suspect it tasted bitter, none too bitter. For if they wanted idolatry, they should have idolatry. And if they wanted idolatry, then they must be allowed to find out how bitter is idolatry in the end. Moses' action stands as a solemn warning to us all.
It is not seldom one of God's ways that if we will do foolishness, then God will allow us in the end to find out how bitter is our folly. I wish I had the tongue of an Isaiah myself, or the tongue of a Jeremiah and an Ezekiel, to make it apparent how bitter and foolish and nonsensical is idolatry. Listen to God through Isaiah a moment, will you? There's your idolatry for you, says Isaiah. There it is. Could you imagine anybody so stupid? He's determined to make himself an idol, so he seeks him out a tree that will not rot, and he cuts it down, and he lops the excess branches off it, and he takes off the bark, and he cuts this bit here, and he cuts that bit there, and he makes an idol, beautiful and lovely to look at.
And then when he's made his idol by his skill, he puts it on its pedestal. And then he notices all around are the bits and pieces of the wood that he's had left over. Ah, he can't leave them around his idol, so he collects them, and finding himself hungry, he he puts them on the fire and cooks his breakfast with them. And breakfast over, he turns round, and there's the rest of the wood, and he falls down and worships that. Fool, you say. He worshiped the wood that cooked his breakfast. And shall we be likewise in my- our day and age? Idolatry?
Oh, we don't, uh, fall down and worship literal images, of course not, do we? But the essence of idolatry, amongst other things, is this, that we worship the work of our own hands. We put our trust in the faculty of our own mind. It is a common saying to be heard that idolatry means loving something more than you love God. And of course, that can be true. But in the ancient world, the ancients very rarely loved their idols, but they feared them and they trusted them. Maybe on times we are tempted to love something more than we love God and make of it an idol.
More often, perhaps, we are found trusting something other than God and making that thus our idol. We trust the work of our own hands, and more often we will trust the deliberations of our own mind. Why, of course, you say you have to trust the works of your own hand. Goodness me, here's a carpenter and he makes a chair. Shall he not dare to sit down in it? Why, if a man makes a chair, he must trust the works of his own hand and sit down in it. Of course he must. And shall we not trust our own minds? Why, if we add up one and one, can we not trust our own minds to reach the conclusion too? What do you mean, Mr. Preacher, that we shouldn't trust our own minds?
Yes, we are to trust our own minds. We are to use the physical powers that God gave us. But in that ultimate sense, that ultimate sense of, of where shall I get my bread and butter from? How shall I run my world? Where shall I get the wisdom from, and where the knowledge to solve life's ultimate problems? It's at this level, isn't it, that we face the danger of idolatry. God has given us his holy word, written, if you might have it, with the very finger of God.
It stands always as a challenge to our intellect. Shall I trust what God has said? Or supposing that my intellect is wiser than God's word, shall I allow my intellect to cavil at God's word, and in the last analysis, trust myself rather than him? It is at this crux that many a man and woman in our modern age has stood. Will they trust Jesus Christ, God's son, with their minds? Will they trust him implicitly? Will they say like Peter, to whom else shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we are sure that thou art the Holy One of God. Or will they turn aside and for those ultimate things trust not God's word, but their own intellect? And Israel turned to worshiping idols in the wilderness, Moses made them drink the old idol in their water until its bitterness enunciated them. When Israel under the kings turned to idolatry and proved incorrigible, at length the divine wisdom threw them out of the land and took them down to Babylon.
And once more, God was saying, you want idolatry? Well, have idolatry. You don't want to be my people and worship me? You will have the ways of the nation. Why, go and learn the ways of the nation. Go down to Babylon, where every street corner is full of temples with idols. Go there and have it. At the end of this age, a world of men that has abandoned faith in the living God and put its ultimate faith in its own intellect, brain, and brawn, to find God do the same thing. He should say, right, if you won't have me, the living God, have your idols.
And this age shall end, as we have had occasion to remark before, this age shall end with man turning from the living God and bowing down at the feet of an image. An image set up by that last ruler of this present age, the man of sin himself, who exalts himself above all that is called God, and in the place of the living God puts man for man to worship and man to trust in. The modern world has gone a long way along the road that shall lead them there. One fears there is no turning back now for the multitude. Our little kiddies from their earliest days are taught that this whole universe needs no other explanation than mindless materialistic evolution.
Then man is the one you must trust. Man's brain is what you must trust ultimately to solve all your problems, and in the end, God will let man have his idol and find out the fearful bitterness of tyranny that shall come upon humankind when man, forsaking the true God, goes the full road of idolatry and bows down at the feet of his fellow man. We may not live to see such lurid times, but there is a similarly grave word spoken to us by the Apostle Paul, is there not, in one Corinthians ten?
The question whether or not a Christian was free to eat meat offered to idols, you will remember, was a practical and a grievous problem to some in the early church. And there was more than one way of looking at the problem. From one point of view, Paul could tell them an idol is nothing, and therefore it hasn't done anything to the meat if it's been offered to an idol, and you are free to eat the meat. From another point of view, an idol was something, for in the view of the Gentiles, that idol was the representative of a demon behind it. And therefore the Gentiles, in eating food offered to idols, were having fellowship with demons.
And I would not have you fe- have you have fellowship with demons, says Paul. You cannot, in fact, partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. So you better make up your mind, which you do. You can't do it. Well, at least you can do it physically. But if you do it, do please be aware of what you're landing yourselves in for. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Be it known, says Paul, to you believers, that if you will persist in having fellowship with the table of demons and thus compromising your faith with idolatry, the Lord himself will deal with you.
And if you don't deal with yourselves, then he will deal with you. If you will not repent and forsake it, then God will take steps to make you repent. For this cause indeed many are weak among you and sickly, and not a few have fallen asleep. These are strong words, aren't they? But words, uh, that we need still to hear. Our businessmen will need not to be told that our modern business world is riddled through with idolatry. There is one secret society, if not more, that for the sake of trade and professional advancement, encourages businessmen to meet in their secret meetings and engage in the horriest old idolatry that men ever knew.
Bell and Bull and the King of Tyre and all these hosts, along with Isis and Osiris and the rest of them, and Belfast is riddled with it from end to end. But they say, you can't run commerce without it, and my good man, if you don't join, you'll stand to lose your order, and you won't advance in your profession. You must join, old chap. More than one businessman in this province has told me of the pressure that was put on him and the temptation that assailed him, with a wife and children to maintain, and the natural desire to make progress in his profession, when his, the principles of his firm put the pressure on him, how difficult the decision was.
Where was he going to get his salary from and where his hopes have increased? If he wasn't prepared to bow and become a member of the society. And there are men, aren't there, that solve their, solve their consciences and say, ah, well, I don't really go to many of the meetings, but I have to be in it. My dear brother, we cannot partake of all the material benefits that come from the table of demon and the table of the Lord as well. Or if you try it and you are a believer, God will deal with you until he brings you to repentance. So then Moses, um, broke the old idol and cut it up and strewed it on their water, and let them taste in their daily food and drink the bitterness of having trusted in idolatry.
And the discipline wasn't over yet, was it? There came something even more stern. And Moses saw that Aaron had let the people loose their enemies were laughing at them. And have you not seen it in modern times? I remember when that execrable book, Honest to God, came out. I remember the smiles and the laughter of some of the atheists and agnostics and humanists, don't you? They say, well, goodness me, the man professes to be a Christian. Now look at you Christians, you're saying the same as what we've always said.
Hello, is this what Christianity has come to? Virtual humanism. Now they smiled and laughed, didn't they? Moses got him up in the camp and called now for sanctification, true sanctification. Who is on the Lord's side, he said. Let him come to me, let him gird his sword on his thigh, and let him go through the camp and slay every man his brother. I shall not need to remind you yet once again, that sanctification in our day does not require of us, indeed it forbids us, using the literal sword on people that we might suppose are apostles, or anybody else for that matter.
The Middle Ages, because it didn't learn or had forgotten the lessons so clearly taught by our Lord, did use the sword, did it not? And Catholics burned Protestants, and Protestants burned Catholics. To the dishonor of God and to the denying of the very plainest of the commands of the Lord Jesus. Not for us now, the literal sword in use in our fight against idolatry. But there remains the lesson, doesn't it? That with idolatry all around us, sanctification calls for the sharpest and the keenest drawing of a line.
Mark you now what things have come to. It's not this little particular and that little particular over which people might well be expected and indeed be allowed to hold different opinions. The issue at stake is some, not some minor doctrine of prophecy, some detail of church organization. The issue at stake is nothing less than loyalty to God on the one hand or apostasy on the other. Loyalty to the inspiration of God's word or disbelief therein. And if the issue be put thus starkly, then the line must be drawn keenly and clearly.
Who is on the Lord's side? You can't be on both sides. Or if I speak to some young man or young woman here, troubled in your studies, with modern unbelief, then allow me to remind you that back of all the intellectual and all the academic stuff, there remains this question of loyalty to the Lord Jesus, and you will have to seek his grace to decide to stand and take your issue. It is a question of who is on the Lord's side. When modern theories are taught that by implication deny his deity and deny his inerrancy.
Then you can do no other but make up your mind and take your stand. Here there can be no compromise. I was in the course of my professional duties recently in one of our training colleges in this city. And there the students had organized a seminar to consider what happens after death, both to the believer and the unbeliever. And I was called upon to come and give my view. Another professional was asked to come and give her view.
I gave what you would have given, I suspect, at least I gave in my simplicity what the Word of God says. That for the believer to depart is to be with Christ, which is far better. That for the believer to depart is to be immediately with Christ, as our Lord told the dying thief. And thus and thus I said and finished. And then the other professional began. Said she, we used to believe this and that, but now because of the advance of ideas and the advances that theology has made, we now don't believe any of that at all.
Oh, what a lovely relief it is, he said. You see, you read in the New Testament, of course, uh, this and that, that when people die, uh, they go off to heaven here or somewhere else. But of course, we can't believe that for this reason. That the New Testament was written in a pre-scientific age, when men believed in a three-decker universe, with heaven up there, earth in the middle, and hell beneath. And now we know, of course, in this modern age, that there isn't such a thing as a three-decker universe. So we can believe what the New Testament says. The depth of her ignorance was awful.
For in the times when the New Testament was written, the learned and educated didn't believe in a three-decker universe anyway. In hundred years and more before the New Testament was written, it was known that the world was round, and scholars like Eratosthenes had measured the d- the circumference of the Earth and its distance from the moon. And the learned Stoics in Saint Paul's day didn't believe in a three-decker universe. They believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. And the Epicureans of Saint Paul's day didn't believe in a three-decker universe. They believed in infinite space and that the whole atoms were flowing down in space endlessly and eternally.
And Saint Paul himself knew what the Stoics believed and knew what the Epicureans believed and talked to both of them on Mars Hill, you will remember. It is altogether, uh, gratuitous to suppose that the writers of the New Testament believed in any three-decker universe. But that, by the way, for it is a small point. Here was this professional professing to be a Christian, and here she is telling us that you can't believe what the New Testament says about what happens beyond this life. You can't believe it. Why, when our Lord said it... Why, come, we've come to a pretty pass, haven't we?
Had we not better stop right here? If our Lord said something, can we not believe it? Right down the middle of our religious education must this sword swing. Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come and take his stand. For in the end, it is nothing less than that, that is at stake. There may be no false sentiment here.
With the honor and the veracity of the blessed Lord Jesus at stake, there can be no false sentiment. We stand with him, or we stand against him. That done, Moses went back up the mountain to God and broke his heart. Had you seen him down there on the plain smashing that golden calf, calling upon the Levites to show their loyalty and sanctification by slaying each man his brother, you may have got the idea that Moses was a hard-hearted, severe, and cruel man.
I should see him now. You know there wasn't a man down there on the plain, but what he would have died for them. Oh Lord, he said, have mercy on them, or else blot me out of your book. It was no hardness of heart, no nasty little persecution mania that moved him to those strong measures. Behind them there was a love that would have died for every one of those rebels, had it been necessary.
And mark the word of God that comes back in reply, very good, Moses. Now I shan't blot you out of my book, and a good many more of them I shan't block out of my book. Them that sinned I will deal with. When on the one side we talk of making a clear cut and distinction in our doctrine, then must we be careful, mustn't we, as God himself, by his grace, is careful, to distinguish men and women that knowingly do what they do and teach what they teach out of deliberate disobedience and disbelief.
And many another ma- man and woman and young person who, without realizing the implications, is taken up with this bit of modernism and that bit of modernism, and it seems so reasonable and And broke his heart. Had you seen him down there on the plain smashing that golden calf, calling upon the Levites to show their loyalty and sanctification by slaying each man his brother?
You may have got the idea that Moses was a hard-hearted, severe, and cruel man. How you should see him now. You know there wasn't a man down there on the plain, but what he would have died for them. Oh Lord, he said, have mercy on them, or else blot me out of your book. It was no hardness of heart, no nasty little persecution mania that moved him to those strong measures. Behind them there was a love that would have died for every one of those rebels, had it been necessary.
And mark the word of God that comes back in reply, very good Moses. Now I shan't blot you out of my book, and a good many more of them I shan't blot out of my book. Them that sinned I will deal with. When on the one side we talk of making a clear cut and distinction in our doctrine. Then must we be careful, mustn't we, as God himself, by his grace, is careful, to distinguish men and women that knowingly do what they do and teach what they teach out of deliberate disobedience and disbelief.
And many another ma- man and woman and young person who, without realizing the implications, is taken up with this bit of modernism and that bit of modernism, and it seems so reasonable, and they have no intention in their heart of dishonoring the Lord at all. They don't even realize what the implications of the things that they are now imbibing are. Have mercy on them, won't you? But if they really knew the implications of what they have been taught, they would throw it up, uh, over. But for the moment, they have been deceived. It is a comfort to know that God himself can draw and does draw the distinction between men that have deliberately and knowingly disbelieved, and those who, by dint of lack of knowledge, have simply been deceived.
There was then the second part of the reprise. It is altogether a happier thing. In answer to Moses' intercession, God says to Moses, all right, Moses, I grant you what you ask. Go down, take this people that you have brought up out of Egypt, and take them to the Promised Land. Very good, I will spare them. I will not take them away prematurely in my discipline. They may go on and go towards their Promised Land. I'll send my angel before you, Moses, but I myself shall not come. I couldn't possibly come among them, Moses.
An arbitrary and stiff-necked people like that. They don't want me anyway. They want my blessings. They want the promised land. They want the milk and honey. They're not interested in me, Moses. Why should I go with them, Moses? No, Moses, I should destroy them if I came with them. There would be so many. I should have to reprove them for their incipient idolatry. Better that I don't go with them, Moses. You take them, Moses. Go on, you can have the milk and honey. Have them without me, Moses. And God began to talk like that. He brought the people up with a jolt, didn't he?
This is the first time I read they began to weep. Began to dawn on them. The significance of what they have done. Suppose they did get to Canaan then. And with all the milk and with all the honey. God wasn't there. What then? Suppose I become the wisest man on earth and the wealthiest and the most famous. God isn't with me.
What is it? Suppose you get home at last. You wander, wander around those golden streets and in and out the pearly gates, and you see all the wonders there are to be seen, and in the end you find it empty. And God isn't there. Oh, I tell you, you'll very soon tire of the road, you know, driving along golden roads isn't much different from driving on Tarmakadam, except for the first time you do it, and after that. Pearly gates instead of mahogany doors, all right, they seem flashy for the moment, that won't content you very long.
And star clusters without number, and all their gold, and all their silver, and all the bright company of the angelic host, and the whole lot combined. Wouldn't content you many years if God wasn't there. People begin to think over the proposition, yes, God is saying, go on, you can have cane in then, you can have the milk and the butter. What do I care for a few pounds of butter? Have them. Have them without me. And Israel began to tear off their ornaments.
Do you notice the reflex? Those old earring things. Oh, there was nothing wrong in them. Made some of them look a bit better than they otherwise would have done, and there's a lot to be said for that. But if God wasn't going to go with them, what are ornaments? And they pulled off the ornaments, and the fine clothes went as well. They got down to what they were without God. What are you without God? Little bit of play. A few years of beauty when you were around eighteen to thirty five, Some dignity now you're sixty five perhaps.
A little bit of success. And a coffin. And dust and ashes. And even while you lived underneath it. Oh, I'm not insulting you. Broken, twisted, sinner, aren't you? Oh, what would any of us be without God? Stripped down to what we really are. Poor, broken, twisted men and women, and sinners to boot.
There isn't an angel that would come near any one of us, weren't he commanded to come by God. For the universe, we've made a veritable hell of our planet. Ah, what should any of us be without God? Why, suppose one day we had all the butter and milk of Canaan and the gold and silver of the eternal city itself. Why, without God, we should fall a squabbling over the very pearls of Jerusalem and destroy that heaven as we've destroyed our earth.
They were solemn days and serious, as Moses and Israel had time to think about it there as they waited and lived those stationary months in their tent. God hadn't left them, of course. For in those days, so we are told, before the tabernacle was built, Moses used to have a little tent. It's not the same as the tabernacle, you are aware. It was a little two-man tent. It was a small tent that Moses and his servant Joshua could take and carry the two of them outside the camp and pitch it there. And so Moses used to do from time to time, and leaving the camp behind, he would go out with his two-man tent and pitch it out there in the wilderness.
And then Moses and Joshua would get inside the tent. God would come down in his glory, and the cloud of God's presence would stand outside the tent. You see, it's a different, uh, setup, isn't it, from what the tabernacle eventually was, with the great tabernacle, it was the other way round. They built a tabernacle, and God came down and dwelt in the tabernacle, and the people stood outside the tabernacle. Not this, with this little tent, it was in reverse. Moses got inside the tent, and God came and stood outside it.
They were occasions that, uh, were like, for instance, when Elijah stood upon the mountain of Horeb, and God passed by, and Elijah came and stood in the mouth of the cave, and God passed by it. They were occasions like that soon to happen now, when Moses was told to come up the mount, and he was put in a cleft of the rock, and deity came and stood outside the cleft and spoke with Moses and passed by. These were marvelous days.
There was one man on earth, his name was Moses. And amidst all this idolatry, Moses had been faithful. God could come down in the desert and stand outside Moses' door, talk with him. We're told that when that used to happen and the glory came down, the people used to peer out of their own front doors and look out there at the camp and up the road, and there was the glory descending, and they said to themselves, isn't that marvelous? What a marvelous man Moses must be. Do you know, after breakfast, some days when he has his quiet time, the very glory of God comes down outside his tent.
Marvelous man, Moses. Sometimes, so the text says, they used to go out, and at these meetings, Moses was inside the tent, and the glory of God came down, and they got near enough to sense something... marvelous that was happening to Moses. We're given to understand what the conversation was from time to time when God came down to Moses' front door in the desert. It went like this. My Lord said, Moses. You've told me to take this people that you are pleased to call my people.
Actually, Lord, they're not my people, they're your people, if I might remind you. But you told me, look, take these people and a- a- and take them through this wilderness and and take them into the land of Canaan. Very good. I wonder, God, he said, would you mind telling me how you propose to do it? And how you propose that I'm going to do it anyway? Show me, Lord, your ways. It wasn't Moses being devotional so much, was it? Just Moses being tactical and hard-headed. He was saying to God, in effect, this, look here, God, here we are in this wilderness with this people.
I know we have sinned and grievously sinned. You say to me, take the people up to, to Canaan. Well, what's the good of your saying that to me? How do you suppose, now would you mind telling me, by what means or method? Please fill in the detail. How do you propose as a practical procedure to get these people from here to there? Would you mind showing me your ways? You said take them up. You haven't yet told me who will go with me. How are you going to do it? Said God to Moses, all right, Moses, I tell you my way and how I propose that you're going to get the people from here to there.
Moses, after all, I will go with you. Thank you, said Moses, for if you don't go with us, we might as well stay here, you know. Don't tell me to take them up unless you're prepared to come with us. It can't be done. As we think of Moses in his tent, and the people seeing his glory, perhaps we cannot help but think of another verse. It comes in the New Testament, in John's Gospel, chapter one.
it is. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. For the Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us. We beheld his glory. Glory as the only begotten of the Father. Full of grace and truth. Oh, what stirring moments they are, are they not? When with your book in hand and lost to the world, you begin to read that glorious gospel of those wonderful days when the Word pitched his tent among us.
And you read, you observe the glory of that human life that was the man Jesus, God incarnate. Here on our very desert, here on our planet, and all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in him. And you are amazed and wonderstruck at the words of grace that proceed out of his mouth, of the acts of power, of the sinlessness of his life, and the evidence that God was with him. And in a sense, it burrows your heart in worship. Oh, that's wonderful. I tell you, it ain't enough. All the life of Christ on earth and the manifest glory of God isn't enough to get you from the Christian church here now, the rest of the way home to glory.
And certainly it won't be enough to try and get there on the dint of somebody else's, some other human's experience, will it? It is a wonderful thing. It is a wonderful thing to sit and listen to a Spurgeon. Don't get the wrong idea, I've never done it, I'm not that old. But it must have been a wonderful thing to sit and listen to a Spurgeon in full flow and sense the very glory of God come down upon the man. Marvelous it must have been. To have been able to creep into George Müller's study and see him on his knees and hear him pray to God and sense the very presence of God come down to George Müller's front door.
Who hasn't been moved to hear Billy Graham preach and since the power of God with him and the realities of eternity there by his very side. And it has thrilled you and moved you. Well, thank God for that. I won't get you to heaven. Being impressed by other people's experience won't get you to heaven. It will get you there. Why here now that greater than Moses, talking to God about his own? Father, he says, these are the men that thou has given me out of the world, and here they are.
And now I have to leave them. Father, how are we going to get these men home to glory? I will that those whom thou has given me be with me where I am, but how? Hear him begin to pray. Oh God. It'll be less than this. Father, that you'll be with them. I'm more than that, Father, in them. Just like you've been in me. Father, be in them.
I in them. Thou in me. No other way would get them home to glory. In answer to that prayer on the day of Pentecost, there came down God, the Holy Spirit, come down to reside in his people, and never to leave them until he had brought them home at last to heaven. Oh, marvelous God, how on earth could I ever get home to heaven?
How cover those last miles? How ever get in? But if not right here, this very moment, God himself has come down into my poor broken heart to make it his shrine and tabernacle and walk with me home to glory. I know, says Moses, we're on the desert sand, but that's your way of getting us home to glory, God, getting us home to the glory of our inheritance. God, you showed me your way.
Did you show me your glory? Moses was told to come up, and he was stood in the cleft of the rock. God put his hand over and came and passed by and called the name of the Lord, gracious and compassionate, who will by no means clear the guilty, and then took his hand away. Moses saw God, saw a little of him, saw his back part. Seeing it, his very face was transfigured and transformed.
When he came down, we are told the Israelites saw it and marveled at the transformation. They had seen a little bit of the glory of God in the face of Moses. Some centuries after, there came a time when Paul got very discouraged over his converts in Corinth. They had begun well, and they had believed the gospel. They had been converted, they had been cleansed and sanctified and justified. But in more recent times, they'd fallen into idolatry and turned into immorality and into strife and all sorts of carnality. And Paul's enemies were beginning to whisper and to argue.
There you are, Paul, there you are. Well, the stupid man. You've got what you deserve, haven't you? Fancy preaching your gospel of grace, that a man can be saved by grace without works. Why, Paul, if you will preach that nonsense? Well, you'll reap what you sow, Paul. Look at your converts, you see, Paul. I mean, what a perfect disgrace they are. That's what comes of telling people they can be saved by grace and be sure of salvation. Look at them. Why don't you preach the law, Moses, for salvation? Rising above his depression, Moses presently, uh, Paul presently thinks himself of Moses, and he says, what, me?
What, me, Paul? I preached the old covenant. No, indeed not. When Moses came down that mountain with that renewed old covenant, certainly it was of God's magnificent grace that that old covenant should be renewed. Certainly, when he came down, his face was aglow with the very glory of God. The glory faded, and the covenant came to nothing. No, I shall not be preaching that old covenant. I shall be preaching the new covenant whereof God has made me an able minister.
For in that new covenant, I find the very heart of God, his name proclaimed. Forgiveness of sin, and forgiveness of sin so complete that I may know the Lord personally. A knowledge of the Lord so intimate that he writes his laws not on tables of stone, but upon my very heart. That holy new covenant was born. Presently, as he talked about it, glory began to come across his face, didn't it? Ah, that old covenant, glorious, but anybody can do that, can't they? That old covenant, what could it do in the end but to condemn a man?
What could it do in the end but to sentence him to death for his failure? And were we under it, we had no hope of ever reaching glory. But all this marvelous new covenant. Paul's face, I say, began to shine with the glory of God. It's a glory that shall never fade, says Paul. And as we gaze upon the face of God, in Jesus Christ our Lord, why, even here as we tread the wilderness desert sand, we are ourselves being transformed from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.
Show me thy way. Oh, show me thy glory. How shall I be kept on course? Oh, my brother, how shall I ever arrive home at last and be like the Savior? How shall I be saved from being turned aside to the little baubles that Satan throws in my way? How shall ever I be saved from the glitter of the golden calf and all idolatry? If from time to time he doesn't come near me and show me his glory, till the very glory of God overpower all else and demolish all other attractions and win my heart so overwhelmingly that before I know what I'm doing, I'm up and moving, moving ever more readily and steadily on to where I see the glory shining, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
I think you've seen it. How do I know? Why, when you've made every allowance for all the difficulties and the failures and the weaknesses of God's people. Ah, my brother, ah, my sister, there's a glory being written upon your very heart. It's beginning to dawn already on your personality, isn't it? Now are you the sons of God. It does not yet appear what you shall be, but now already. Family likeness is being formed.
I thought I saw it just then in the way that you forgave that other sister. I thought I saw it then in the way your heart went out for the preaching of God's gospel. I thought I saw it then as you didn't grasp or place, but knelt and scrubbed the floor of that lonely widow because she was Christ's. I thought I saw it, and it was the glory of God in the face of Christ you must have been looking there at. I see it beginning to dawn in your face. Ah, there's a lot of road yet to go, isn't there? Keep on looking, my brother, for as you look at that glorified Lord Jesus Christ, the glory of God fills your soul.
It will keep you like nothing else on earth or heaven, keep you journeying on, and shall bring you at last where you shall sit down with him, fully transformed, conformed to the image of God's Son. Shall we pray? Lord, now we thank thee for thy holy word. We thank thee for its joy, and we thank thee for its sadness. We thank thee, Lord, for its gladness and for its solemnity.
We ask, Lord, that thou will imprint these lessons upon our minds. Give us, Lord, we beseech thee, ever increasing faith in thee and in thy word. But Lord, as we finish this particular series of studies, we have finished many of them, and we're not yet home. O Lord, we realize that learning is not doing. Look upon us now, we beseech. Young and old, look upon us, we pray, and as Moses asked, we ask again. Show us, Lord, thy ways.
Show us and make it real to us how thou dost propose to get us, even me, home to glory. And Lord, even while we tread this wilderness, leave not our vision till we arrive home, but if it please thee from time to time, show us even now thy glory, that we beholding may be transformed and find in thy very glory the incentive to move forward, till at length we arrive for our eternal gladness and for thy eternal presence.
Dismiss us then with thy blessing through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
