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Once Saved Always Saved-True or False? Part 2
Aug 01, 2007 at 11:09 PM
Once Saved Always Saved-True or False? Part 2
In this part of our study we will look at the events of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. We looked at the giving of the Law to the Children of Israel by Moses and his being a “type” of the Law. Now we will look at the event pointing to Moses as a “type” of Christ. This portion of the study comes from Chapter 32 of the Book of Exodus.
For teaching purposes I will break this study down into sections of the entire chapter. I will be using the New King James Version of the Word for a better clarity of Scriptures.
Ex 32:2 - Ex 32:3 (NKJV) 1Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron.
The entire chapter is a narrative of the apostasy and the renewal found in Israel. We can see that redemption (deliverance from Egypt{Sin}) does not bring immediate sanctification. Although the nation as a whole had been delivered, and now had an eternal relationship with God, sin was still a part of the nation and it required diligence to avoid or remove it. Israel was presumptuous in their relationship with God not understanding God’s unique character. It also refers to this in the 1Cor. 10. Aaron himself was carried away in his lack of maturity in spiritual understanding.
Israel as a whole was impatient and dissatisfied with the way things were going. They began murmuring against Yahweh in which advanced to disobedience, and, finally, to idolatry. It is the same with individual believer today, also was it the same with the nation of Israel. True and sincere repentance (involving the removal of sin) was met with forgiveness and restoration as it does today with the individual believer.
Exodus 32:4-5 4And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” 5So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.”
It is interesting that Aaron told them to gather up all the gold from within the people and bring it to him. He then fashioned it into a molded calf. We should understand that at the time this was taking place Moses was up in the mountain obtaining the 10 Commandments from God. Now what makes it so interesting is the fact what they were doing was the very thing Moses was receiving in the tablets.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments”.
What is most interesting to me is the fact that a sacred bull or calf was common to pagan fertility religion. The people were seeming to equate Yahweh with this calf as Aaron built an alter before it and proclaimed, “Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord. What made things even worse was that Aaron refused to accept responsibility for what he had done. According to Aaron, the people were at fault not him and that the calf had formed itself. We will see that later in the study in verse 24. In verse 4 we see that the people proclaimed that, “This is your god, O Israel which could be understood as “These are your gods”, saying that the gods the calf represented are those that delivered them from Egypt. The demonstrative pronoun and the verb “brought” are grammatically plural. The word for “god” used is ‘elohim(Heb.) which is in plural form. It could be either plural or singular in meaning though.
Exodus 32:6 6Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
The Hebrew verb sahaq, translated “play,” could refer to sexual activities in which frequently dominated the fertility cults of pagan nations such as Egypt. It would appear that they were having drunken orgies.
Exodus 32:7-10 7And the LORD said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. 8They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’” 9And the LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! 10Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.”
Now is verse 10 we see that the command of God was actually a test similar to the test that was given to Abraham pertaining to the sacrifice of Isaac. In essence the fate of the entire nation of Israel was in the hands of Moses. Just as the fate of the entire fate of mankind was and is in the hands of Yashua, (Jesus). But God could not nor would not retract His promise made to Abraham though. Even if in His wrath He destroyed the entire nation of Israel for their apostasy, He would then fulfill the covenant made to Abraham through the decedents of Moses. Now we see that Moses could have given up on the people who were guilty and exalted himself but he didn’t. We see a correlation between Moses now and Jesus as He hung on the Cross. Satan tried to get Him to come down off the cross with the words, “If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross and save yourself. But because Jesus was concerned for the salvation of the world rather than saving Himself, He remained to the death. Moses passed the test and proved that the preservation of his people were more important than becoming the founder of a new nation.
Exodus 32:11-14 11Then Moses pleaded with the LORD his God, and said: “LORD, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. 13Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ 14So the LORD relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.
Moses pleaded with God in three points that he knew God highly valued:
God’s relationship with Israel
God’s reputation before to the nations of the world
God’s covenant promises to the patriarchs
The word “relent” is used in the NKJV as probably a clearer understanding rather than traditionally “repent”. We can see then that the action God had announced was actually conditional. When the condition was met, God then retracted the punishment. We can see this in Jonah 3 & 4. Our punishment is also conditional. But the condition was met in Christ Crucified. The condition was met in Moses as well for he did not give up on Israel and exalt himself. He pleaded with the Lord for his people. God is not to be understood and a static, abstract perfection. Rather, He is a dynamic Being in which always acts in ways that are perfectly consistent with His own eternal purposes.
Exodus 32:15-18 15And 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. 16Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. 17And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” 18But 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.”
Moses had nothing to do with the origination of the two tablets. It was by the hand of God that the words were placed on the stones and the placement by the Lord were from His own thoughts. The noise that Joshua heard was not a noise of war as he thought but rather it was the drunken partying of the people as spoken of previously. They were having drunken orgies before the golden calf in which Aaron had made.
Exodus 32:19-25 19So 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. 20Then 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. 21And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” 22So Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 23For 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.’ 24And 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.” 25Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained (for Aaron had not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies),
The breaking of the tablets was symbolic of the breaking of the covenant between the people when they said, “All the words which the Lord hath said we will do”. They had obviously said this without meaning it. He put the commandment down in stone that would eventually lead to their destruction. For they had broken the covenant in which they had made with the Lord. For He had delivered them but they equated Him with a graven image of a calf. The very covenant they had made had now caught them up and passed judgment upon them. The burning and grinding of the calf and the drinking of its ashes symbolized the ultimate repudiation or denial of idolatry.
We also see now the denial of Aaron of his responsibility in the idolatry. He at this point was afraid and asked Moses to not be angry with him. He said the people were to be blamed and that they had made him make the calf. But Moses saw that Aaron had done nothing to stop the nakedness of the people and their drunken orgies.
Exodus 32:26-29 26then 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. 27And 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.’” 28So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day. 29Then 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.”
Moses stood at the entrance of the camp and called to the tribe of Levi. This in fact is the correlation between the Law and the Punishment thereof. Through the Levites, was the punishment of God, which is death for the sin the people had done, carried out. Moses told them to get their swords and go through the camp and all that were found still engaging in the drunken orgies, immoral sex acts, and idolatry, they were to kill. These things were the rites that were done by the pagan religions. We see that they were even commanded to kill their own brothers. We see there were about 3000 men put to death and that may not be including the women that were engaged with them.
The very ones that had been delivered from the bondage of Egypt and set into freedom by the hands of the Lord fell under the punishment of the sword of the Levites and lost their freedom because of disobedience.
Exodus 32:30-32 30Now 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.” 31Then Moses returned to the LORD and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! 32Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.”
Now we can see where Moses became a “type” of Christ offering himself for the sins of the people. He first asked for forgiveness for the sins of the people. We see the same attitude in Paul in Romans 9:1-3. “I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, 2that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, 4who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; 5of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen” This is correlated with Christ praying for those given to him in John 17:9 “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given me for they are Yours. He is praying for Israel the children of God that believed on Him. Israel is Gods chosen people but not all will be saved. Some as we saw, some 3000 died in one day in unbelief. They were his chosen and delivered by His own hand but were killed because of disobedience.
Moses then said if God wouldn’t forgive them, then he would rather his name be removed from the book of life that God had written. We see Moses offered his own life as an atonement for the people of Israel. Now no more plaintive or bold intercession of man for men is found in the entire scripture. But God would not accept the blood of Moses, but He did accept the life of His only Son Jesus as an atonement.
Exodus 32:33-35 33And the LORD said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. 34Now 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.” 35So the LORD plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron made.
Now this is a very interesting passage of scripture indeed. For this is the Lords answer to Moses’ offer for atonement for the people. His answer was, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book.” There would be only two trains of thought for this statement made by God. Either train of thought would prove that the impossibility taught by the OSAS folks and the predestination teachers would be totally untrue.
Either God in His eternal plan has written every name of ever individual that will ever be born down in this book before the creation of the world.
God will write their name down, as some believe, at their acceptance of his grace offered. Then God said, Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book.
The obvious answer would be that as the scripture declare, God wrote every name of every man, woman, and child that ever would be born, down before He ever created the world. Though He knew that all would not accept this Grace He has presented in writing their names down in His book first, it was His plan that ALL would be saved therefore writing their names down before time. For it is written, God is not willing that ANY should perish! Christ Crucified before the foundation of the world was the Way that all could be saved. But yet all will not accept this Grace and at some point in their lives God will blot out their name from the book. God knowing the hearts of all men knows when a person has gotten to a point of apostasy and become a reprobate and blots them out. Also, if a person dies without accepting this grace offered by God, it is to late for repentance then. His/her name is blotted out and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Though the children of Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, which is spiritual bondage to sin, their names were written in Gods book but when they sinned the great sin spoken of in this study, God blotted them out of His book. Moses understood God’s plan therefore asked for his name to be blotted out for them. Paul as well understood this plan. For this is the Plan of the Ages.
Now on the second point, if it were true, would still make it possible for a person to be written in the book of life and in disobedience be blotted out. So the entire doctrine of OSAS is false and take many to their death. They toy with disobedience with the mind set that they can not be blotted out once their names are written down in the Book of Life. They believe that God will not allow them to fall into sin once they are written in the book of life. What does the scriptures teach? Did God allow Israel to return to Idolatry? I think it is obvious that He will. God will not force His Grace upon anyone. The process of sin we saw in the children of Israel was first murmuring, second disobedience, and lastly idolatry, which brought them death. They lost the salvation they had once known.
In Conclusion
So in this study we have looked at the scriptures in the light of truth and determined that the OSAS Doctrine along with the Predestination Doctrine is indeed false. We have shown that one can indeed turn from the deliverance we have been given freely from our Lord. Our names can indeed be written in God’s book of life and in unbelief and disobedience we can fall into idolatry and be blotted out of His book by Him! In our next study we will be looking at the children of Israel being kept from the same mistake again by the Law delivered to them from Moses. We will see how the Law keeps the nation of Israel until the promise He made to Abraham comes to pass. Hopefully we will see the method that we are to attain the promise made by God to ALL mankind not only the children of Israel. Hopefully we have shown that our names are written in the book of life before we were ever born through and by Christ Crucified before the foundations of the world. He was crucified so that the entire world could be saved. Although all will not accept the gift offered and will be blotted out. Every day that we are given to remain in the book of life is by Grace alone. The only way to remain in the book is to believe in the one that wrote us there in the first place. We must believe that He is able to deliver that which He promised! Christ Crucified for our atonement!
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