I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 32. Exodus chapter 32, I'll begin reading at verse 25. This is God's holy and infallible word. And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose, for Aaron had let them break loose to the derision of their enemies, then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, who is on the Lord's side? 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 your sword on your side, each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you 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 3,000 men of the people fell. And Moses said, today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day. And the next day Moses said to the people, you have 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 has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin. But if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written. But the Lord said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of 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. Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made a calf, the one that Aaron made. Let us pray. O Lord, your words are more to be desired than gold, even much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. We pray, O Lord, that your word might be sweet to us this evening. May your spirit write it on our hearts and grant us understanding and faith in Jesus Christ. Amen. When I used to work as a programmer for about six years for one particular company, their headquarters is in Oregon on the east side of Mount Hood. And I'd fly there from Wisconsin about once a year and spend a week there. And every time I flew out there, I'd always want to get a seat by the window on the plane. Because I don't know if you've flown into Portland before, but there is just a magnificent view. When you look to the south and you see Mount Hood, you can see other peaks of other cascade mountains, Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, I think. I don't know exactly which ones you can see, but it's like you look off and you see there's this massive mountain sticking up, poking through the clouds, and then off in the distance, Above the clouds, again, another one. I don't remember how many you can see, but it is magnificent. The scriptures have these mountaintop views that are simply glorious. And this passage tonight, I am going to submit to you is one of these grand mountaintop experiences piercing through the clouds. The theme for the sermon tonight is you need a willing and able mediator to stand in the breach to save you from the wrath of God. You need a willing and able mediator to stand in the breach to save you from the wrath of God. And the sermon this evening will have two points. First, your sin deserves death. Second, your sin requires atonement. Your sin deserves death. Your sin requires atonement. So first, verses 25 through 29, your sin deserves death. Moses saw that the people had broken loose. This word means to lose control. Aaron let the people break out of control. Moses had just descended from Mount Sinai. The first thing he did was confront Aaron for bringing such a great sin upon them. Moses' anger, in a righteous imitation of Yahweh's own anger, burned hot. Presumably there are still crowds of people who are singing and dancing and reveling to the derision of their enemies. Yes, Israel had been reduced to a state of being laughed at, ridiculed, and scorned. Yahweh had delivered them from Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai. And now here they are at the foot of the mountain, reveling in their idolatry. People will laugh. The nations will hear of this and roar. You Christians, you're no different from the rest of us. Well, as we've worked our way through Exodus chapter 32, it has been made abundantly clear through the text that this sin of Israel is so severe, so rebellious, so dreadful, so disobedient, that the very existence of the nation has been brought into question. Yahweh had entered covenant with Israel He had audibly delivered his law to them, the Ten Commandments, but in constructing the golden calf and worshiping it and instituting a false feast and strange singing, they had flagrantly violated the First and Second Commandments and the very foundations of the covenant shook. As I've noted several times now, this event is to be seen as serious as the fall of Adam in Genesis 3. I hope to make that connection a little more clear this evening. While it's true Israel's sin was radical and extreme, the shorter catechism helps us understand the significance of our own sin. You and I may be tempted to think, hey, wow, yeah. Israel, can you believe those people? Thank God I'm not as wicked as they are. They really had it coming to them. You and I aren't really that bad, are we? Yes, we sin, but our sins are of a lesser, more palatable nature. God understands our sin and will just pass over it because we commit little sins. He lowers the bar for us. Wrong. Question 84 of the Shorter Catechism. What doth every sin deserve? Big sin, little sin, every sin, every sin deserves God's wrath and curse, both in this life and that which is to come. It doesn't have to be some rebellious, idolatrous, willful sin. Even the smallest sin deserves death and eternal punishment from God. Your sin, big or small, puts your life into extreme peril. Can you imagine the magnificent power and wondrous wisdom of the being who made all this vast and varied creation. And can you imagine all that power and wisdom of God focused into the fierce anger of wrath and retribution? This is the response that your sin and my sin deserves, your sin deserves death, wrath, curse, both in this life and in the next. The situation is so serious. You can imagine the anxiety and immediacy that moved Moses to act. He took drastic action to restore order in the camp. So Moses stands in the gate of the camp and cries out, who is on the Lord's side? Come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. And God gives the command through Moses that the Levites are to go through the camp, putting the idolaters, whether it be his own brother or companion or neighbor, to death. Admittedly, there are ambiguities in this text that make some of the details difficult to figure out. Who exactly are the Levites to kill? The 3,000 men who are put to death, why them and not the others? We are not told. Perhaps they sinned more heinously. Perhaps these were people who, even after Moses came down, had continued in their idolatrous merriment. Perhaps there was a significant contingent of Israel who had participated in the idolatry. To a lesser extent, we simply do not know. But we do know that it was God who gave the command Thus says the Lord God of Israel, put your sword on your side, each of you, and go through the camp to put to death those whom I command. The death of the 3,000 appears contrary to Yahweh's decision in verse 14 not to destroy the nation. Of course, this is not destroying the nation. This act of the Levites is about bringing an end to the active in-progress rebellion and immorality. And in this sense, this mimics the Levites' eventual protection of the tabernacle itself, right, in terms of stopping people from misusing it. If people came to touch Mount Sinai, they would be put to death. If those constructing the tabernacle didn't follow Moses' instructions, they would be put to death. If people touched the tabernacle after God moved to dwell in it, they would be put to death. If someone leads another to worship other gods, they would be put to death. Anyone who got too close to the Holy God or who did something to overturn the covenant itself must be put to death. What happens in this account is very similar to what is stipulated in Deuteronomy 13, verses 6 through 11, which we read earlier. For those who entice others secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods. They must not be pitied. They must be put to death because they sought to draw you away from the Lord, your God, your Savior. In the face of all this rebellion and chaos, the Levites have proved faithful to God, and as a result, that very day, they are rewarded by being ordained for the service of the Lord. Order has been restored, but the guilt of the nation still hangs in the balance. That brings us to our second point. Your sin requires atonement, verses 30 through 35. The next day Moses said to the people, you have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the Lord. Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin. The death of the 3,000 does not atone for the sin of the nation. As in the situation with Achan, the nation stands guilty before God. Their sin deserves death. Moses is aware of the enormity of the guilt, the gravity of the situation. It needs to be resolved. Israel's sin and your sin need atonement. Moses returns to the Lord on the summit and he says, alas, This people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold, but now, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written. Right at the outset, I'm going to explain another ambiguity. In the meaning of the text, what is this book that Moses and later Yahweh speak of? There are two different views on this. One holds that this is the book of the living. And to be blot out of this book means physical death. The other view sees this book as referring to the enrollment of those destined for eternal life. I'm not going to give the detailed arguments for one or the other, because by comparing these words with other passages in Scripture, you will find that either view is viable. Either view has its argument to be made for it. It's not really that important to the point of the passage. What is important is that, remarkably, Moses offers himself to preserve the nation. Moses offers himself. The commentators I looked at didn't really make a big deal of this offer. They brushed it aside saying, well, Moses is a sinner himself. He actually can't offer himself to atone for their sins, so of course, God would respond with a hard pass. I think this way of thinking misses the deep significance of this dramatic event. This is one of the cascade mountaintop events in redemptive history that is just so grand, it penetrates into the clouds in its magnitude. But for that, we will have to take a quick scan of some other biblical events. My claim here is that the concept of atonement is actually the central theme of the entirety of the Pentateuch. Atonement is the central theme. of the entirety of the first five books of Moses. Let's briefly take a look at several of the high points of this theme. Noah built the ark in accordance with God's command. Interestingly, the word for atonement occurs twice in Genesis 6, verse 14, where it refers to and is translated covering. refers to the covering the ark inside and outside with pitch. By faith, he entered the ark along with his family. When the floodwaters subsided, the new creation was revealed. The ark rested on the summit of Mount Ararat, and Genesis 8 verse 20 says, Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Noah offered burnt offerings to atone for sin at the inauguration of the new world. Genesis 22, verses one and two. After these things, God tested Abraham. and said to him, Abraham. And he said, here am I. He said, take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. Yes, God commanded Abraham to go to Moriah. to take the son of promise, Isaac, and to offer him up on Mount Moriah in order to sacrifice him as a burnt offering to make atonement. Genesis 22, verses seven and eight. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, and he said, here am I, my son. And he said, behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. And then he tied him up and put him on the wood. And just as Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son, the angel of the Lord called out to stop him. And verse 13 of that chapter. says, reads this way. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. We won't spend time on it, but Judah offers himself to Joseph in the place of his brother, Benjamin. in a substitutionary sense to atone and save Benjamin. There is the Passover lamb of Exodus 12. The Lord saw the blood on the door frames, which covered, atoned for the sin of the nation, and they were spared from destruction. Moses, in our passage, offers himself to atone for the sin of the nation of Israel on the summit of Mount Sinai. And the true climactic center of the entire Pentateuch, the annual and most important day of atonement as legislated in Leviticus 16, the day in which Aaron, the high priest, entered the Holy of Holies to atone for the sin of the nation with the sacrificial blood. as a new Adam enters the symbolic garden of Eden, the summit of the mountain, to offer atonement for the sin of the nation. And I would argue, and this bears much, I don't know, contemplation. I would argue that you can read this theme that we're supposed to read this theme back to the primeval origin of the world and all humanity in the fall, back to the first Adam and to Genesis chapter 3. Because when Eve sinned, what should the sinless Adam have done for the sake of his bride? He ought to have offered himself to atone for her sin. The question is not whether any of these people or sacrifices could actually atone for sin. Of course, the blood of bulls and goats and the blood of fallen man cannot actually cover sin. But God repeats this theme again and again and again to catechize his people with this simple but profound and absolutely critical truth. Your sin requires atonement. Your sin requires atonement. And this is why the last Adam, the greater Moses, Jesus Christ has come into the world. He came to offer himself as a substitute, that by his shed blood, he might atone for your sin. Hebrews 9 verse 11, but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places in heaven, the very throne room of God, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood. thus securing an eternal redemption. You must have faith in this mediator, this savior, this uniquely qualified person. God, the son come in human flesh, Jesus Christ, the only one in the history of the world, both willing and able to stand in the breach, to atone for your sin, and to save you from the wrath of God. It is true that Moses himself cannot actually atone for the sin of Israel, but Moses has demonstrated in an extraordinary way the central work of a true mediator between the holy God and sinful man. This is central And this is a high point in the book of Exodus. Sin must be atoned for. The Lord responds to Moses saying, those who have sinned against him, he will blot out of his book. Perhaps this refers to those who were not put to death by the Levites, but who nevertheless had flagrantly sinned in idolatry or immoral behavior. Again, we can only speculate. These the Lord visited with a plague because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made. The very punishment that fell on Egypt time and time again here falls on the idolaters who had abandoned Yahweh. And then in God's graciousness, he responds to Moses to Moses' request, his own willingness to atone for the sin of the nation by saying and telling Moses, lead the people on. Bring them to the place that I have told you. For the Lord will send the angel of the Lord before them in his grace and in his mercy. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we do confess, we recognize, we understand, we know that our sin deserves death. And we thank you that your scriptures have so clearly revealed your plan of salvation, that our sin requires atonement. And you have most wondrously provided a perfect Savior the God-man, Jesus Christ, your son, who came in flesh for the singular purpose of atoning for our sin, for saving us, and for living a obedient and righteous life, that we might receive his righteousness. We bless you, we thank you for our mediator, the second, the last Adam, who ushers us into the new creation. the new heavens, and the new earth, with all joy and all glory, we pray, O Lord, hasten the day of his return. Amen.