Exodus 32:15-35
15 And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. 16 Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.
17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.”
18 But he said:
“It is not the noise of the shout of victory,
Nor the noise of the cry of defeat,
But the sound of singing I hear.”
19 So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. 20 Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it. 21 And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”
22 So Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 23 For they said to me, ‘Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”
25 Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained (for Aaron had not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies), 26 then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, “Whoever is on the LORD’s side—come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. 27 And he said to them, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’” 28 So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day. 29 Then Moses said, “Consecrate yourselves today to the LORD, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.”
30 Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” 31 Then Moses returned to the LORD and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! 32 Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.”
33 And the LORD said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. 34 Now therefore, go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Behold, My Angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit for punishment, I will visit punishment upon them for their sin.”
35 So the LORD plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron made.
The lesson from this passage where Moses received the personally written word from God to His people is that those who sin are blotted out of His book of life. This means all have sinned and come short of redemption (Romans 3:20, 23) and can only be kept in the Book of Life by Jesus Christ (Romans 6:23, Revelation 3:5) as in Him alone (Psalm 69:27-28, 29) and have been written in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Philippians 4:3, Revelation 21:27). In this first covenant of works, salvation had to be armed by doing good, but what was taught was that nobody was able to do good without sinning (Romans 3:20, 21-22, 24-25) and so pointed towards grace of a complete sacrifice of atonement by God’s work for us of His grace to justify us (Romans 3:26). This is the gospel of Jesus Christ who alone is the way to life. There is no other way or system to earn a place in God’s Book but through the author of everyone’s (Hebrews 5:9, 12:2) salvation. The law written by God’s own hand and handed to Moses to follow by the letter proved in the moment he came down from the mountain that we are unable to follow the moral law completely as so are guilty (James 2:10) before God unless another steps in to take that penalty of sin away and then engrave those laws on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10, 10:12-14, 16-18) instead of cold lifeless stone (2 Corinthians 3:3) by His own hand by His Spirit of Grace. Israel had attempted to please God by following the spoken law and failed as the written was handed to them by Moses as proof of all of mankind’s inability to work our own righteousness. The people then fell under the same condemnation of judgment which we all are born under as inheritors of Adam (Romans 5:12, 14, 17, 18) who can find deliverance from sin’s penalty in Christ and His sacrificial work alone on the cross with the promise proven by His resurrection as assurance of our own with Him when the books are opened. Moses attempted to intervene and intercede to atone for their sin by the mountain of God, but this still pointed to God’s mercy to save them until the true intercessor (Isaiah 59:16, Galatians 3:19-20, 1 Timothy 2:5) who was both God and man came to mediate and make this possible. God told Moses that whoever sins is blotted out of God’s book, but that means all without grace cannot be in His book unless He atones for our sin first and then writes us in by His vote and not our ineffective efforts. He will not blot out our names if we are truly in His book by the grace of the Son of God, our Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7) who takes away the sin of those in the world (John 1:29) whose names are recorded (Revelation 20:12, 15) by His hand of grace with the promise of eternal life. Though we are still accountable for our sin as loss of rewards (1 Corinthians 3:12-13, 14-15), we are not in danger of losing our place in His book because Jesus Christ intercedes (Hebrews 7:25) forever for us! Without Christ, we remain sinners and are blotted out of His book. In Christ our sins are covered and we have a permanent record of being in His book. This is our certain hope (1 Peter 1:3, 4-5, 1 John 5:13) of eternal life which cannot (John 10:28-29, Ephesians 1:13-14) be taken away, lost, or forfeited.
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