Exo 30:17-33:23
Can you believe it?
After God had just labored over what it means to worship him providing every last detail the people rebel. The peoples actions are incredible, amazing, and unbelievable all for the wrong reasons. I just can’t get over this line from chapter 32 verse 4:
Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
Now like you I have been reading along and I can safely say I don’t remember any golden calf leading the people out of Egypt and through the Red sea!! The LORD is not impressed and gets ready to take action against his people to bring judgment and rightly so. Moses steps in and tries to mediate between the people and God in verse 30:
The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.“
He is not really successful in his quest he is not able to make atonement for the people he can’t give up his life to save theirs from judgment.
Now if we as Christians believe we are so much more civilized than those stiff-necked Israelites, listen to how Paul describes the Christians in Corinth (1 Cor 6:9-11):
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
We must believe that like Israel and like the Corinthians we all fall short of God’s standards and should face the judgment of God. Praise be to God that we have someone who can and has made atonement for us – Jesus!!
Can you believe it?
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