November 6 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Exodus 32:30–35

Devotional

Israel sinned greatly against God by worshipping the golden calf. Three thousand people were slain as their punishment. Judgment was postponed for the others. But humanly speaking it was still to come. “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.”

Without grace, this is also our condition. How many have already gone before us into eternal anguish? Their sentence was executed in righteousness. They are there “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” And there they can say nothing but, “My own fault; my own fault.”

If God’s grace does not intervene in our lives then we too are lost, although we still remain in the land of the living. We are so blind and wretched that we live on as if the day will never come when our Maker will say, “Give an account of thy stewardship.” God has the right to punish sin. May this awaken you, unconverted sinner! Recognize your unpaid debt before God.

The wrath of God on Israel was no less on the living than on the dead. There was only a reprieve for the living. You who do not recognize your guilt against the holy law of God also live in the same condition. When you see that you are guilty before God and that you have nothing to pay, then there are nights when you dare not sleep for you are afraid that you may not awaken. Every day may be the end of the reprieve and each day there is the possibility that you could die unreconciled.

Redemption is impossible from your side, for you cannot pay for your own sins, and according to your observation, it is also impossible from God’s side, for the Lord cannot renounce His justice. God can do all things, but He cannot deny His own attributes. It would be necessary for Him to renounce His own honor if He did not punish sin. God cannot permit Himself to be offended and at the same time have peace with a rebel who has offended His attributes. This is the observation of a guilty sinner, and if he had to die in this way, he would have to concur with the psalmist of Psalm 119:137 when he says, “Righteous art thou, O LORD, and upright are thy judgments.” If God does not work a miracle in his life, then all is lost. The Lord Himself must give him what His justice demands, and God is not obliged to show mercy. The miracle is that since man cannot come to God, God now comes to man. God provides Himself a burnt offering in His only beloved Son, and the Son gives Himself. Jesus, greater than Moses, is the perfect Mediator. He could pay with human blood because He was true man and yet His blood was also pure, free from the serpent’s poison of sin, because He was a righteous man. Yea, more than that, He was at the same time God, able to bear the burden of God’s wrath against sin. Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

 

From The Everlasting Word by Frans Bakker, compiled and translated by Gerald R. Procee. Reformation Heritage Books and Free Reformed Publications, 2007. Used by permission. For further information, click here.