Exodus 32

Exodus 32:1-34

Subdivision 2. (Exodus 32:1-35; Exodus 33:1-23; Exodus 34:1-35.)The breach of the first covenant, and the mixture of law and grace in the second, -the “ministration of death.” In that which follows here we have the breach of the first covenant and the establishment of the second, -that under which the people went into the land. Under the first, they could not really be said to have stood at all: it was no sooner made than broken; as under pure law none could stand. The trial of it, however, readily undertaken by those ignorant alike of themselves and of God, was, on that very account, and for the continual lesson of what man is, needed to be made, in order that God’s grace might have room to show itself, as to self-righteousness it could not. Thus from the beginning God contemplated this second covenant rather than the first, and with it the tabernacle-types plainly connect themselves. The people are, according to this, already sinners, and the special priesthood of Aaron, with the whole mediatorial system connected with it, applies itself to this condition. Yet we must not confound this second legal covenant with the “new” one, under which Israel will inherit the land, and find abiding blessing in the day yet to come. They are still in contrast, as the epistle to the Hebrews at large explains. And the covenant with Abraham, as is shown in that to the Galatians, refuses equally, as a covenant of promise, to be supplemented by conditions of law (Galatians 3:15-18). The Abrahamic and the new covenant are in substance one: the second legal covenant is in character but a modification of the first here, and in result like it, -nay, more completely what the apostle calls it, a “ministration of death” and of condemnation." (2 Corinthians 3:1-18.) The lesson is for us, and in all this Israel only represented man as man -ourselves, therefore, for we are men: “As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.” (Proverbs 27:19.) Therefore if “whatsoever the law saith it saith to them that are under the law,” none the less is it “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” Our interest in all that we find here is not, therefore, to be such as might be in a past history merely, but fully and intensely personal. Under pure law, we no more than they could stand a moment. Who could think to stand before Him in rigor of its pure and holy requirements? But the trial is not complete when we have learned that. It is much more than this to realize that we are “without strength,” and that we need, not assistance to keep the law, but true . “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” The “due time” was when that was fully proved and therefore the need of that which proved it, -the “ministration of death” and “of condemnation.” Not yet could God reveal aright His grace, though in proportion as the need declared itself so did the grace, and thus a mingled system -neither pure grace nor pure law, but just what in the thought of most the gospel should be. Therefore the need that the trial here should be more thorough and patient than the last, as now, when God has spoken of mercy in Himself, it can be. The trial in this case lasted until the captivity. Its issue was decisive, as “a ministration of death” must be. In the grace of the gospel, the dead hear the voice of the Lord, the life-giver, and live (John 5:25). But while the result to the people as a whole was thus protracted, the beautiful system of types connected with the law brought nigh to faith already, in measure, at least, the grace it needed. Externally the vail was over Moses’ face; but where the law was allowed to do its work upon the conscience, and the soul realizing its guilt turned with it to God, it could with the Psalmist learn to say, “Thou art my hiding-place.” The thirty-second psalm, with other kindred ones, throws a comforting light upon the way in which under the shadows of law grace could yet be realized. Let us not on that account confound the two conflicting elements in this second law-giving, nor deceive ourselves as to the necessary result of the mixture of law and grace. The grace thus mixed made it only a more searching exposure and demonstration of man’s condition. It was a ministration of death.

1. In the first section here we have the action of divine righteousness in view of the rebellion of the people, while yet God acts as He will in the sovereignty of His grace. The legal covenant has not, of course, tied His hand in this respect, nor can He forget, though for the moment it might appear so, that promise to the fathers which we have seen to be that upon which He had acted in redeeming them out of Egypt. Nay, in fact, grace governs all, and the law itself is but its handmaid: its lessons, with all their sternness, do but shut us up to the necessity of grace. (1) In the rebellion of the people, human nature shows itself in the blindness and folly of its religious side. It will make a god rather than not have one, and is not competent to estimate the value of a god so made. Beyond doubt, even with the wisest of those that follow it, there is in idolatry more than the virtue of a symbolic teaching. There is a mysterious supernatural power which is supposed to reside in the image, and which, at least, has a strange fascination for men, as shown in the general spread of idolatry over the earth, its invasion of Judaism, and long afterward of Christianity. No folly seems more complete than that of bowing down to the work of one’s own hands, yet here is shown out what in reality its power is. Not liking to retain God in his knowledge, man makes Him what he wishes Him to be -the reflection of his own passions and desires.

These are what already control him, and so he but yields himself to their control in his idol. A new power is added to this when man’s original choice becomes confirmed by the adoption of many and by lapse of time concealing its origin, so that it comes to have authority over the conscience as well as power over the heart, -authority which may soon over-top the other. What Samuel says to Saul long afterward is illustrated here: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is iniquity and idolatry.” (1 Samuel 15:23.) So we find it in this case; and of how many more subtle forms is this as true! The effect is seen in the manner of their new worship, consecrated though they would have it with Jehovah’s name. “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to sport” -after the heathen manner. They were “broken loose,” as was said of them directly afterward. “Inasmuch as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things that are not seemly.” (Romans 1:1-32.) Broken loose from God, as men they degrade themselves. In Aaron’s fall with them, both the ruin of man and the unrepenting grace of God are manifest. God is marking him out for the high-priesthood in Israel, while he is making the golden calf below! (2) Above, Jehovah now makes known to Moses the sin of the people, laying the burden of them upon him -“Thy people, whom thou broughtest up,” -putting their case into his hands, so that if he but said so, they should be destroyed, and Moses’ own seed become the nucleus of a nation. But He well understands the man whom He is addressing; and Moses shows himself a beautiful type of the great Intercessor, the Servant of the divine glory and the people’s need. Moses is here fully established as the mediator of the covenant in the new condition of things that was to ensue. (3) So too Levi consecrates himself to his office now (Deuteronomy 33:8-9,) by the demonstration of a fidelity to God which in zeal for His glory allows the interference of no human tie. The tables of the first covenant are broken beneath the mount, in token that the covenant itself is at an end; and judgment only remains, executed by the hands of kindred; for the breach with God loosens all bonds at once. (4) Moses himself also fails in the atonement that he proposes. This is impossible, even to a devotion well-nigh unequaled among mere men. But “none can by any means redeem his brother, nor give unto God a ransom for him.” (Psalms 49:7.) To the eager demand, therefore, “And now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of the book that Thou hast written,” God can only reply, “Whoso sinneth against Me, him will I blot out of My book.” Yet He confirms the commission to lead the people to the land He had promised, though the stroke of judgment could not be so averted. Another would one day offer Himself in atonement for more than Israel, and would not fail. 2. Although God will still, therefore, fulfill His promise, and bring them into the land, yet in the meanwhile His own relationship to them is compromised, nor can He in this condition go in their midst as heretofore. They must take the place of those whose sins had separated them from the Lord, for in such a place alone could He show them mercy. Moses too must be recognized as the one through whom alone He could have to say to them, -the mediator, and though not an atoning mediator, the type of Him who would be that. This, then, is plainly the meaning of what is before us in this section; and its importance is plain. (1) In the first place, then, Jehovah declares to them through Moses why He cannot take His place in the midst. Were He to do so, they would be consumed by His holiness. Let them strip themselves of their ornaments and await His judgment in the attitude of repentance. For to take the place of condemnation is repentance. The people accordingly strip themselves of their ornaments at the mount. (2) In further sign of where they are, Moses removes from the camp the tent which had been heretofore connected with the worship of Jehovah, and pitches it outside and afar off, and calls it “the tent of meeting,” for all who now sought the Lord had to go out to the tent. There, too, the intercourse between Jehovah and Moses was seen by the awe-stricken people -Jehovah speaking with Moses out of the pillar of cloud, “face to face,” as a man speaketh with his friend. It is here that the peculiar glory of Moses is announced (Deuteronomy 34:10), and it is here that we see especially the image of that far greater Prophet whom he represented. Christ, the Son of the Father, in perfect communion with the Father, is the One who alone can thus occupy the Mediator’s place. How blessed to see Him in it! Upon this link with God our all depended when every natural link was broken. 3. The way is now prepared for restoration, and this we find in the concluding section. Moses takes fully the ground of grace and of God’s promise, and God reveals Himself afresh, declaring His grace, though it is not yet the full grace of the gospel. Here, of necessity, all these types fail: they are the shadow, not the image. The special testimony of law to man, that by law the way to God could not be opened, would have in that case itself failed. (1) In the first place, then, the grace of God is emphasized, and as sovereign grace, in dealing with the sin that had come in. It is Moses’ plea, and to it God answers promptly, proclaiming that He shows mercy as He will. But to Moses’ desire to behold His glory He can only answer in a qualified way. Man cannot see His face and live, and as yet He had not come who could say, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” Moses, therefore, had to be covered by the divine hand while the glory passes by, and then sees but the back part, -a thing most significant as to the character of the law as then given, -the way into the holiest not manifested, no ability to stand before Him, thus God Himself in His full blessedness unknown. It is a thoroughly kindred thought with that which Solomon uttered in the day of the dedication of the temple, when, the glory of God filling the house, all the priests were driven out! -“The Lord hath said that He would dwell in the thick darkness.” Every Spirit-taught Christian will recognize the contrast in the words of the apostle, “We walk in the light as God is in the light.” (2) The tables are now renewed, and the commingling of grace and law is fully seen in the new-made covenant. God declares Himself as Jehovah, the Self-existent God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, -it would seem as if grace were here fully manifest. Straight athwart that magnificent declaration comes this other which seems the antipodes of it,—" but who will in no wise clear the guilty, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation." There was yet no justification of the ungodly then, -no gospel, -no attainment of a positive standing before Him. This the apostle implies in Romans 3:25-26, where he contrasts God’s dealing with “sins done aforetime” (R.V.) with the grace of the “present season.” In the former case, it was a “passing over of sins.” In the present, it is the justification of him who believeth in Jesus. And it is God’s righteousness as seen in the cross that alone reveals how He could thus “pass over.” With no revealed ground of righteousness thus yet through which grace might reign (Romans 5:21), and man yet under the trial of law, which has since given sentence (Romans 3:19), the gospel could not as yet be spoken out. This was all the ministration of death and condemnation, although God did not by this tie up His own hands, nor was faith left without encouraging assurance, as we have seen. But as yet even the mercy declared was but the “back part” of God’s glory, and His face could not be seen. He forgave iniquity, transgression, and sin, and went on with those who merited to be cut off; but with One who could not clear the guilty -and where was the man who was not that? -it required a more positive utterance than this to give any one to know how for himself these two things were to be reconciled, and to give the heart its rest. More than this needs to be considered before the place of the Mosaic legislation can be rightly apprehended. The question of its silence comparatively as to the eternal condition of the soul has been raised and answered in very different ways. The fact itself is plain: there is remarkable silence; which if a Warburton can weave it into an argument for “the divine legation of Moses,” is still a real perplexity to many a soul. Let it be indeed an opinion to be condemned that the fathers only received promises for this transitory life, yet the contrast in this respect between the Old Testament and the New presses for explanation. Only the more so, that we know (but know by the New Testament) that Abraham and the partakers of his faith did look for a heavenly country, and a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Why is it left to the New Testament to tell us this?

The hearts of men have never been able to satisfy themselves without some faith as to eternity; and where we know they had it, was it likely to have lacked expression? Least of all, where, as the apostle tells us, the life expressed it, is it to be supposed that the lips would not utter the hope of which the life was full? But if this be so, something must have operated to keep this largely out of the Old-Testament pages, where, as a divine communication, we would expect it not only to be found, but prominent. Can we give any account of this? Any partial account will be helpful surely; and such at least can be given, as we shall see. A growing revelation, under dispensational differences of light and divine government, has plainly been God’s way of procedure with men from the beginning. He had to teach us both what we are and what He is and does in view of what we are. And the two had to be developed in correspondence with one another. What we are shown to be is the dark background of His own glorious revelation of Himself. But the proof as to what man is (upon which the other waited) required a long detail, slowly accumulating. As Israel had their forty years in the wilderness, so the world had its forty centuries ere “when we were yet without strength,” and in the “due time” at last arrived, “Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6.) The books of the Old Testament -the revelation of all that long waiting-time -are characteristically books of law, the Pentateuch and the outgrowth from it, and partake of its slow development and reserve. While for faith there are all through glimpses of deeper things, which we, looking back, can now see every where through it, yet on the surface it is God dealing with man here in this world to which these dispensational dealings belong. The race is here, though eternity is before each individual of it. But the law settles nothing as to eternity; blessed be God that it does not! God never proposed to take man to heaven by law-keeping, or to send him to hell for not keeping it. Thus you can neither find heaven among its rewards nor hell among its penalties.

The “hell” of our common version, into which the Old Testament declares “the wicked shall be turned” (Psalms 9:17), is now well known to be “sheol,” or “hades,” the place of the dead. And that which in the New Testament is the real hell of fire -“gehenna” -is in the Old Testament but the valley of Hinnom at Jerusalem. Even “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4,) refers not, as is commonly supposed, to the second death, but to the first; the soul of a person being, in the Scripture-language, often just the person himself, as where Balaam, for instance, desires that his “soul may die the death of the righteous” (Numbers 23:10, marg.), where, of course, the second death is not at all in question. It is, indeed, the death with which we are all familiar which the law threatens to those who disobey it, just as long life in the land, not eternal life in heaven, is held out as a reward for obedience in the fifth commandment: a life which would have been “eternal” (Mark 10:17,) if the law could have found that perfect obedience which no mere man ever rendered. Failing in this, it stopped every mouth from self-vindication, and brought all the world in guilty before God (Romans 3:19). As to eternity, God was free still to show His grace, while as to man’s claim upon His righteousness, it was demonstrated that he had none. If death, the death that is upon all, were the law’s penalty, every grey hair upon a man’s head was his manifest condemnation; and this was so complete, so universal, that just the completeness of it has blinded the eyes of most as to the reality of it. They suppose that if the law says, “The man that doeth them shall live in them,” a life beyond death must be meant; or, similarly, that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” must mean the “second death,” while they do not see that in this case the demonstration intended by the law as to man’s condition would be completely lost. It would be left to eternity to decide whether all had, in fact, failed under it or not; and each one would decide this according to his inclination. But the law as it was, allowed of no such escape; and its sentence, “There is none righteous, -no, not one,” appealed to the handwriting of God Himself for confirmation. The finger that had marked the tables of stone marked with no less clearness its verdict on those that were under them. Death had come in through sin, and death had passed upon all men because all had sinned. It was the manifest stamp upon the fallen creation. But that which had come in by the sin of one, God in the law would give every one opportunity and help to justify his exemption from, if he were able. How fitting the means used which for the most carnal should bring conviction, even while God’s mercy was left free to display itself in a region where, as the law could not convey the reward, so it could no longer enforce the condemnation! The silence of the law as to eternity was as significant, then, as its utterance was plain in riveting upon man the conviction that by the deeds of the law should no flesh living be justified. And if God added to the law here given the second time the declaration of forbearance and mercy, without which the trial itself could not have continued to its perfect issue -though God permitted, in His goodness, man to turn over the blotted leaf and begin a new one, -yet as there was still no justification of the ungodly, and the measure of requirement necessarily must be still the measure of those ten commandments now afresh given word for word as before -then all was hopeless under this new covenant as under the old. Faith might discover, however, that these new tables were destined, in fact, for the safe keeping of the ark of the covenant, and to be covered by the “capporeth,” at once the throne of God and the blood-sprinkled “mercy-seat”! (3) The promises are now renewed, and with them the warnings as to separation from the Canaanites and their impure idolatries, to worship the Lord with devotedness of heart and life. It is not difficult to see, in the ordinances that are here afresh insisted upon, the typical holiness of the people who are to be as Moses has just now asked that they might be, the Lord’s inheritance. (4) The covenant is now completed by writing upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. The period of forty days repeated in the mount may show that this covenant, like the former one, has a probationary character. What follows develops this, as the apostle shows us in his commentary upon it (2 Corinthians 3:1-18). Let us remember that the first time Moses went up, when the covenant was purely legal, no glory reflected itself in his face: the second time it was evidently connected with the display of God’s glory in His goodness, though not yet by any means His full-orbed grace. Still there was glory; but under law it could not be beheld even as thus reflected. Moses has, therefore, to cover it with a vail while speaking to the people, -a vail which is removed when he goes again into the presence of the Lord.

This vail characterizes the dispensation in which the precious things of God’s grace, as we have been looking at them, were necessarily under the cover of typical ordinances. For us the vail is done away in Christ. For Israel it will be also when they turn to the Lord for it is unbelief only that retains it now. Thus a probationary law, whatever may be mixed with it, is still but law. The least tincture of this destroys the character of grace, darkens the glory of God, and deprives the soul of all its blessedness, as well as of the moral power, which is only found in happiness in God. For us the glory is in the face of Jesus Christ, where to see it is to rejoice in it. But all through that time of legal distance we may be assured that for those who individually turned to the Lord the vail was in some measure taken away. Christ’s day was seen: types shadowed and prophets prophesied of Him. For us His full glory is revealed, and if there be any distance and any vail, it is in the lingering of a vail upon the heart -it is unbelief.