Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome to another episode of sermon Q and a I'm Vicki Basinger. And I'm sitting here with pastor Craig and pastor Michael, and we're talking through some questions from the sermon on the golden calf preached on July 11th, 2021. And today, pastor Craig, I'm going to start with you. And we're talking about the book of life. What is it? And does God have other books that he's keeping in heaven? Does he have a library up there? What's going on? Okay. I feel like you're baiting me with that question because we
Speaker 2 00:00:34 Had a conversation whether or not God needs books. All right. So he, whatever he has. Yeah. It is clear in scripture that there is a thing called the book of life. And this book of life is referenced in the old Testament is referenced in the new Testament. In context, in Exodus 32, where the, the children of Israel are worshiping the schooled and calve, God says, I'm going to blot your name out of my book. I'm taking them out, right? And Moses pleads on their behalf and, and God relents, which means he has compassion on them and he doesn't change his mind. He just has compassion on them and they, but he wants him to know how serious it is in the old Testament. When you read about the book of life, it's more, a concept of your life is going is, is recorded. Every action that you do, every word that you say that is a concept, actually that's taken all the way through scripture.
Speaker 2 00:01:25 There's a physical, uh, uh, record keeping of your life. These are the days of your life, right? In the new Testament. Um, it seems to change a little bit, uh, going into the new Testament where it becomes a spiritual concept. And so we have the book of life actually referenced in revelation like five times. And it's referenced in a spiritual context where if your name is not written in the book of life, then you don't have eternal life. So it seems to be in the old Testament, there's a physical life book, trade keeps track of your physical life. And God often in the old Testament is telling his people, if you don't repent and come back to me and stop acting like rebels, I will blot out your life. And as we know, Israelites laid dead across the desert because they didn't make it into the promised land yet that promise was fulfilled.
Speaker 2 00:02:17 Their children made it into the promised land, but none of them did. And by the time you get to the new Testament, I think that concept for us is brought into, uh, into our lives. So that if you don't, if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, if you don't believe that Jesus is God's son, that he died rose from the dead, the gospel narrative. If that's not something that is part of your life, then you are not in God's book of life. And, uh, you, you definitely don't want to be on. I mean, you do want to be on that page.
Speaker 1 00:02:46 Yeah, absolutely. What do you think pastor Michael?
Speaker 3 00:02:49 I remember being a kid and, uh, reading revelation and thinking about a book of life. And it's interesting because there are words that mean different things, depending on what book of the Bible you're or what epic a packer, epic of like history you're in like the word justification, you know, does it actually mean the same thing? Every everywhere does in scripture. And so when I, I remember like getting my head around a book of life, and then when we were studying this, we went a lot deeper. And I don't know that we had really fully kind of gone into this. Like, you know, pastor's like we know everything. No, we don't. Uh, in fact, we study for these things we eat
Speaker 4 00:03:23 Before we get up and preach. We study, it depends what pastor. I know I love when people are like, oh, but you know, Zeke, you'll 30 to four.
Speaker 3 00:03:29 And I'm like, literally no idea what that says anyways. So, um, I think if, if we, what we learned is that when we were in Exodus 32 studying this, there was a temptation in us to take the revelation concept of the book of life and impose it here. But it didn't make it,
Speaker 2 00:03:45 It can make sense because God doesn't need reminders. He doesn't change his mind like that either go at racing names out
Speaker 3 00:03:52 Of books. Correct? Yeah. And so what we, I think, as we studied, what we learned is that okay, in an Exodus, there's a book of all the people who are alive and to be blotted out of the book is to be killed. And then we get to the book we get to Psalms and Psalms picks up the same concept. And in Psalm 1 39 16, it talks about how, um, all of all of David's days were written in God's book. This is a book about the physical world. And then in Psalm 56, verse eight, it talks about how even his sad experiences and sad moments in grieving they're written in his book. So there's a book of everyone who's alive. And in that book is all the deeds of their life. But then
Speaker 2 00:04:29 The book is written before the foundation of
Speaker 3 00:04:32 The world. Well, so trick. So there's a, there seems to be a shift, right? So you get the book of Daniel. This is where all the new Testament, imagery of prophecy, whatever, it's all rooted in Daniel, Isaiah, but Daniel references, uh, the book of life. And this seems to be different. Now this is a book not just of who's alive and what you've done, but this is a book about, uh, who is the people of God and who's not. And then Jesus picks up this theme. Paul picks up this theme and then revelation, as you said, it picks up the book of the life because of the book of life of the lamb. And then it references that that book was written before the world even began that this is a book that, uh, preexisted any decisions we made. And this is where like topics like election come into play. Because when you get to revelation that there are two people in revelation, those who follow the beast and those who don't. And the only difference that that determines whether or not you're going to is whether or not your name was written in the Lamb's book of life, from the foundations of them. Well, that's
Speaker 2 00:05:31 Brilliant because in other parts of scripture, it says even the elect, even the followers of Jesus would believe the lie of the beast, right? If their names were not written in the land
Speaker 3 00:05:40 And that's, and that's where it's like, interesting. Cause if you, if you read Exodus 32, where Moses says, take me instead, blot me out of your book. Instead of them, you would be tempted to think the revelation book, the like, can I lose my salvation? That is not what Moses is saying. Moses is saying, blot me out of the book of those who are alive, kill me, basically take my life. Now, if you can substitute my life for theirs I'm in, but of course another person could never be the substitute payment for another person. It has to be the perfect son of God.
Speaker 2 00:06:10 What happened there as well? Just to clarify, they were sending by worshiping the golden calf in some pretty debauchery ways, right? It's terrible. And so Moses doesn't understand the, the depth of their depravity at the time. And so he says, listen, saved them, take my life instead. And God says, that's not good enough. It's not going to totally
Speaker 3 00:06:29 Moses. We had so much fun yesterday talking about this in our preaching prep, but Moses understood the concept of a substitute. They had scapegoats they've had sacrifices to a degree, but what he learned in that circumstances, oh no, your blood is not good enough to satisfy my anger at their sin. In fact, like we see the whole sacrificial system points to Jesus, so that only his blood could do this. So big, big picture though, is it's kind of confusing because Exodus Psalms, like that's from 1000 BC in earlier, and then you get to Daniel, which is, gosh, I'm pulling this out like fifth, sixth century BC, right? From there on now you have a totally kind of different spiritualized application of it, the Lamb's book of, of life. So, um, is your name and my name written the book of the living. Yes, because we're alive and our R D is being recorded and how God does it. I have no idea as an actual, like leather-bound yeah. <inaudible>
Speaker 4 00:07:33 Come on, man. Where to buy in heaven. I know it could go.
Speaker 3 00:07:41 The bigger question and the most important question is, is our name written in the Lamb's book of life? Um, have we trusted in Christ? That's, that's the evidence. So
Speaker 2 00:07:49 I love that. And I just want to recap because there's a verse in Romans that goes so well with this. It says, um, uh, for a good man, somewhat dare to die. Yeah. You know, for this is a good deal. Um, and some people would die for other people that for good people, some would even, you know, they might go a little further and die for that person, but God commends his love toward us. And that while we were still sending Christ died for us. And so the, the love of God provided a substitute so that our names could be in the Lamb's book of life. Because in actuality, we, we would join in with the people at Sinai and we would be destroyed by God, not for Jesus Christ. Now another
Speaker 3 00:08:27 Fun question is how do people's names get written in that book before
Speaker 0 00:08:30 The foundation of the world for another day?
Speaker 1 00:08:32 And that'll be for another day. So thanks for joining us in this edition of sermon QA, we hope to see you next time.
