Judgment and mercy.
I. THE DESCENT or MOSES THE EMBLEM OF THE LAW'S ENTRANCE INTO A WORLD OF SIN (Exodus 32:15-29).
1. He came with tables written by God's own finger. The Divine origin and claims of the law are still attested by its own nature and by man's conscience.
2. He was met by the exhibition of gross and defiant sin. The law does not come to a people waiting to receive the knowledge of God's will, but busy with their idolatry and breaking what they already know to be his will.
3. The law's advent, therefore, is in wrath (Exodus 32:19).
II. THE INTERCESSOR.
1. His deep consciousness of the evil of their sin (Exodus 32:30, Exodus 32:31). The intercessor cannot make light of man's iniquity. He who bore our burdens felt their weight and terribleness as we have never yet done.
2. His love. Though he hates their iniquity, his life is bound up with theirs (Exodus 32:32).
III. THE TERRIBLENESS OF SIN AS SEEN IN THE MIRROR OF THE DIVINE ANGER.
1. The impossibility of ransom. "Whosoever hath sinned against me him will I blot out of my book." There is but one sacrifice which avails, and that reaches the heart of the sinful and changes it.
2. Mercy to the unrenewed only means a delayed judgement: "Nevertheless, in the day when I visit I will visit their sins upon them."—U.