Our Old Testament passage today truly tempts me to write about the New Testament reading. But my goal is to write about the Old Testament readings this year. It doesn't take a very close reading of the passage in Exodus 32 to see why I might want to avoid trying to find Law and Gospel in the passage. All in all it is pretty much doom and gloom. Yet we do see Gospel, and we see it in a very unexpected place.
Moses brings the tablets of God down from the mountain to find the people of Israel involved in idolatry. He gathers those who will pledge to be faithful to God, the tribe of Levi, and commands them to begin killing those who have departed from the faith. That day the Levites kill about three thousand men. Where's the gospel? Didn't the whole nation engage in idolatry? Don't all the people who have not followed God's commands wholeheartedly and constantly deserve to die? Has not God proclaimed clearly that he is the righteous God who requires perfect righteousness from his people?
We see that God does not leave everyone to die in sin. He provides salvation. He calls us to our senses. He lets us see that our sin deserves death. He then points us to the forgiving mercy which he has shown in Jesus Christ. Indeed our Lord will come in judgment, but he says he will do it in his own time. In these last days he has come in judgment and has poured out that judgment on Jesus. Christ has died for our sin. Here is the Gospel the Lord gives us. Though God's people depart from their faith, though we are quick to forget and to go our own way, our Lord has taken the matter of atonement and forgiveness into his own hands for us.
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