Exodus
32:1-33:4: “The Children Of
By
1.
INTRO:
1.1.
In our last study in the book of Exodus, we looked at chapters 30-31 of Exodus.
1.1.1. We looked at the requirements given by the Lord to
Moses for the construction of the Golden Altar for burning incense in the
1.1.2. We also looked at the regulations for the creation of
both the Anointing Oil as well as the Incense.
1.1.3. Finally, we looked at how the Lord gifted and called
certain men to perform the various crafts necessary for the construction of the
various elements of the Tabernacle. We
saw how this paralleled how He gives gifts to people in the body of Christ for
the building of itself up in love.
1.2.
In our study
today, we will look at Exodus 32:1-33:4.
1.2.1. In this study, we will see what the children of
1.2.2. It is amazing that in spite of the fact that Israel
had seen all of the incredible works of God in the plagues that brought her
deliverance from Egypt and slavery, witnessed her miraculous crossing of the
parted Red Sea, and had God speak aloud to her all of His commandments, for
which she had agreed to the covenant of Moses to keep all of its commandments,
that now when Moses has been gone up on the mountain just a few days she rebels
against the Lord, beginning with transgressing the first and second of God’s
commandments.
1.2.3. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, lists the
following concerning where the word “idolatry” came from:
The
word idolatry comes (by haplology) from the Greek word eidololatria, a compound
of eidolon, "image" or "figure", and latreia,
"worship."
1.2.4. We will discuss the tendency of mankind to fall into
idolatry. Since almost the beginning of
creation, mankind has had a tendency to get involved in idolatry. The things that lead a person into idolatry
are varied as are the ways in which a person may be involved in idolatry.
1.2.4.1.J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) has
written the following about how that mankind has a tendency to be involved in
idolatry:
A
religion of some kind, man will have. God has not left Himself without a
witness in us all, fallen as we are. Like old inscriptions hidden under mounds
of rubbish—even so there is a dim something engraven at the bottom of man’s heart,
however faint and half-erased—a something which makes him feel he must have a
religion and a worship of some kind. The proof of this is to be found in the
history of voyages and travels in every part of the globe. The exceptions to
the rule are so few, if indeed there are any, that they only confirm its truth.
Man’s worship in some dark corner of the earth may rise no higher than a vague
fear of an evil spirit and a desire to [appease] him; but a worship of some
kind, man will have.
But then
comes in the effect of the fall. Ignorance of God, carnal and low conceptions
of His nature and attributes, earthly and sensual notions of the service which
is acceptable to Him, all characterize the religion of the natural man. There
is a craving in his mind after something he can see, and feel, and touch in his
divinity. He would fain bring his God down to his own crawling level. He would
make his religion a thing of sense and sight. He has no idea of the religion of
heart and faith and spirit. In short, just as he is willing to live on God’s
earth, but, until renewed by grace, a fallen and degraded life, so he has no
objection to worship after a fashion, but, until renewed by the Holy Ghost, it
is always with a fallen worship. In one word, idolatry is a natural product of
man’s heart. It is a weed which, like the earth uncultivated, the heart is
always ready to bring forth.
[The] cause is nothing else but the deep corruption of
man’s heart. There is a natural proneness and tendency in us all to give God a
sensual, carnal worship, and not that which is commanded in His Word. We are
ever ready, by reason of our sloth and unbelief, to devise visible helps and
stepping stones in our approaches to Him, and ultimately to give these
inventions of our own the honor due to Him. In fact, idolatry is all natural,
downhill, easy, like the broad way. Spiritual worship is all of grace, all
uphill, and all against the grain. Any worship whatsoever is more pleasing to
the natural heart than worshipping God in the way which our Lord Christ
describes “in spirit and in truth” (Joh 4:24 ) .
1.2.4.2.We first saw God’s people fall into idolatry when
Jacob was leaving
1.2.4.3.In many ways it could be argued that the history of
God’s people in the scripture is the story of one slide after another from true
worship of the Lord into idolatry.
1.2.4.4.The New Bible Dictionary writes the following about
what constituted the various condemnations of idolatry by the Old Testament
prophets:
The
OT polemic against idolatry, carried on chiefly by prophets and psalmists,
recognizes the same two
truths which Paul was later to affirm: that the idol was nothing, but that nevertheless there
was a demonic spiritual force to be reckoned with, and that the idol therefore
constituted a positive spiritual menace (Is. 44:6–20; 1 Cor. 8:4;
10:19–20). Thus, the idol is nothing at all: man made it (Is. 2:8); its very
composition and construction proclaims its futility (Is. 40:18–20; 41:6–7;
44:9–20); its helpless bulk invites derision (Is. 46:1–2); it has nothing but
the bare appearance of life (Ps. 115:4–7).
1.2.4.5.Likewise, the New Bible Dictionary writes the
following about the New Testament definitions and condemnations of idolatry:
The
NT reinforces and amplifies the OT teaching. Its recognition that idols are
both nonentities and dangerous spiritual potencies has been noted above. In
addition, Rom. 1 expresses
the OT view that idolatry is a decline from true spirituality, and not a stage
on the way to a pure knowledge of God. The NT recognizes, however, that the peril of idolatry exists
even where material idols are not fashioned: the association of idolatry
with sexual sins in Gal. 5:19–20 ought to be linked with the equating of
covetousness with idolatry (1 Cor. 5:11; Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:5), for by covetousness
Paul certainly includes and stresses sexual covetousness (cf. Eph. 4:19;
5:3; 1 Thes. 4:6, Gk.; 1 Cor. 10:7, 14). John, having urged the finality and
fullness of revelation in Christ, warns that any deviation is idolatry (1 Jn. 5:19–21). The idol is whatever claims that
loyalty which belongs to God alone (Is. 42:8).
1.2.4.6.J.C. Ryle writes the following about the prevalence of
idolatry in our world:
It is not necessary for a
man formally to deny God and Christ in order to be an idolater. Far from it.
Professed reverence for the God of the Bible and actual idolatry are perfectly
compatible: they have often gone side by side, and they still do so. The
children of
Let
us mark this well: it is high time to dismiss from our minds those loose ideas
about idolatry which are common in this day. We must not think, as many do, that
there are only two sorts of idolatry—the spiritual idolatry of the man who
loves his wife, or child, or money more than God; and the open, gross idolatry
of the man who bows down to an image of wood, or metal, or stone, because he
knows no better. We may rest assured that idolatry is a sin which occupies a far wider field than
this … it is a pestilence that walks in the
1.2.5. We will see how that Moses reacts in anger when he finds
the Israelites worshipping the golden calf which Aaron creates, and then he
grinds up the calf into power and throws it into the water and makes the
children of
1.2.6. Referring specifically to the story that we are going
to read about today, but with general application, the apostle wrote in 1
Corinthians 10:6-8 about how we are to learn from these Old Testament stories
for they are to be types and examples to us:
“Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not
crave evil things as they also craved. 7 Do not be idolaters, as
some of them were; as it is written, “The
people sat down to eat and drink, and
stood up to play.” 8 Nor let us act immorally, as some of
them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day.”
1.2.7. We all probably want to know the Lord and be the
person that the Lord wants us to be in our lives, and in order to be that and
do those things they we need to learn to beware of this thing of idolatry in
our lives. Thus, we will study about it
today and so we might not allow it to take root in our heart and life.
1.
VS 32:1-6 - “1
Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the
mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a
god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from
the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 Aaron
said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives,
your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 Then
all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them
to Aaron. 4 He took this from their hand, and fashioned
it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is
your god, O
1.1.
We don’t know
exactly how many days had elapsed since Moses went up on the mountain to be
with the Lord, but it was probably after many days. Moses was up on the mountain for a total of
40 days and nights, and it was probably towards the end of this time that this
event occurred.
1.2.
Note here the
hardness of heart of the Israelites as they come to Aaron and refer to Moses,
their deliverer, as ‘the man who brought us up from the
1.3.
Aaron shows his
weakness as a leader right here. His
actions reveal God’s wisdom in choosing Moses over Aaron to be over the
children of
1.4.
The New Bible
Dictionary lists the following about where Aaron came up with this idea of
creating a golden calf for
This idol is sometimes
thought to be the Egyptian Apis-bull of
In
nearby Canaan, however, the bull or calf was the animal of Baal or Hadad,
god(s) of storm, fertility and vegetation, and, as in
1.5.
Note here that
1.6.
Notice also that
Aaron arranged for the people to offer burnt and peace offerings, but he did
not plan for them to make sin offerings.
The children of
1.7.
The children of
Israel partied on this next day as they were eating, drinking alcohol (that is
what the Hebrew word here implies), singing, playing, after making the burnt
and peace offerings on the next day.
According to the Bible Knowledge Commentary, the Hebrew word “khak”
translated ‘play’ in verse 6 implies they were also committing sexual
immorality, especially because of the way that the verse is translated and
referenced in the New Testament: 1
Corinthians 10:7-8: “7 Do
not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and stood up to play.” 8 Nor
let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in
one day.””
2.
VS 32:7-8 - “7
Then the Lord spoke to
Moses, “Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the
2.1.
Idolatry always
brings out the worst in people and thus it is a blight upon the earth wherever
it is found. People become like the
thing that they worship and this is what makes pagan worshippers commit the
most heinous of acts in the name of religion.
Pagan worship often leads to human sacrifice, debauchery of all kinds,
and every distortion from godly character imaginable. Here, the people worship a molten calf as if
it is the Lord, and in the process of doing so get drunk and commit acts of
immorality.
2.2.
Notice here the
omniscience of the Lord for He tells Moses with exacting detail what the
children of
2.3.
Notice that the
Lord tells Moses that the children of
3.
VS 32:9-14 - “9
The Lord said to Moses, “I
have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. 10 “Now
then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy
them; and I will make of you a great nation.” 11 Then Moses entreated
the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does Your anger burn against
Your people whom You have brought out from the
3.1.
Here we see Moses
function as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ in His functioning as an
intercessor and mediator for God’s people.
The scripture says that there is just one mediator between God and man,
the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5).
3.2.
This passage
brings up some interesting theological questions, including:
3.2.1. Does God ever say that He will do certain things
knowing all along that He does not intend to do them (here He tells Moses to
leave Him alone that He might destroy the nation of Israel and start over with
Moses) ?
3.2.2. Does the Lord ever change His mind (in verse 14 we
read that the Lord changed His mind after Moses intercession) ?
3.3.
Thinking about
the first question, I think we have to admit first of all that God has His
predetermined plan for this creation which will be performed, as these passages
reveal:
3.3.1. Acts 2:23: “This Man, delivered over by the
predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands
of godless men and put Him to
death.”
3.3.2. Isaiah 14:24: “The Lord of hosts has sworn saying, “Surely,
just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it
will stand.”
3.3.3. Isaiah 14:27: “For the Lord of hosts has planned, and who can
frustrate it? And as for His
stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?”
3.3.4. Isaiah 46:10-11:
“Declaring
the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been
done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My
good pleasure’; Calling a
bird of prey from the east, The man of My purpose from a far country. Truly I
have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it.”
3.3.5. Acts 4:27-28: “For truly in this city
there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You
anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the
peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to
occur.”
3.3.6. Ephesians 3:10-11:
“So that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the
church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This
was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in
Christ Jesus our Lord.”
3.3.7. 2 Timothy 1:9:
“Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our
works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in
Christ Jesus from all eternity.”
3.4.
God foreknows all that will happen in the future, and His
predetermined plan involves His foreknowing of all of the willful choices that
all creatures will make (because of His omniscience), many of which go against
His revealed will. So, when the Lord
says that He intends to do something which He ends up not doing, we have to
know that He knows that in the end He will not do that which He threatens that
He will do. I would say then that it
must be the case that the Lord in doing these things is actually inspiring
people to do those things that He foreknows and are part of His predetermined
plan. So, in reality God is not changing
His mind in these situations when we look at everything from the perspective of
His eternal purposes.
3.5.
Moses uses three different arguments in his reasoning
with the Lord as he is interceding for God’s people:
3.5.1. He reminds the Lord that
He has delivered the children of
3.5.2. He desires God to be
glorified and thus he reminds the Lord that if He destroyed
3.5.3. He prays the promises of
God reminding the Lord of His promises to give the children of
3.5.3.1.This always how we as
God’s people ought to approach the Lord in our praying. Bring before the Lord and remind Him of His
many promises to us.
3.6.
The concept of
being “missional” is a catch-word these days in the church as it
describes the fact that we all as Christians should consider ourselves to be
missionaries. We don’t have to go to a
foreign land to be a missionary, we are to be missionaries right here where we
are among our own family, friends, neighbors, and in our own city. We all should try to think of our lives as being
lived to fulfill God’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-19). We are called to stand in the gap and be
intercessors also for the lost and needy in our world. We need to learn from Moses to be
intercessors and pray for one another in the body of Christ. In the book of Esther, queen Esther of Persia
who was a Jewess during the Babylonian captivity was made aware of a plot to
destroy all of the Jews by the king by her uncle Mordecai, and she we read in
Esther 4:14 that she considered that perhaps God had put her where she was at
for such a time like this. She
interceded for the Jews to the king at the peril of her own life, and thereby
she was used to save the entire nation.
We Christians ought to consider the fact that the Lord has put us right
where we are in our sphere of influence so that we might be a missionary and
fulfill His calling for our lives.
4.
VS 32:15-20 - “ 15 Then Moses turned
and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his
hand, tablets which were written on both sides; they were written on one side
and the other. 16 The tablets were God’s work, and the writing
was God’s writing engraved on the tablets. 17 Now when Joshua heard
the sound of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a sound of
war in the camp.” 18 But he said, “It is not the sound of the cry of
triumph, Nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat; But the sound of singing I
hear.” 19 It came about, as soon as Moses came near the camp, that
he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses’ anger burned, and he threw
the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. 20
He took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire, and
ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water and made
the sons of
4.1.
Moses and Joshua head down the mountain with Moses
carrying the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments written by the finger
of God, and as they get part way down the mountain they hear the commotion down
below. Joshua thinks the sound is that
of a ‘cry of defeat,’ but Moses rightly discerns that the sound is that
of ‘singing.’
4.2.
Moses had spent the forty days and nights in the cloud
with the Lord on the mountain top while Joshua stayed behind on the mountain,
and it is probably because of Moses’ time with the Lord that he has better
discernment than Joshua in determining the nature of the sounds in the camp
below.
4.3.
Moses here is not unlike Jesus Christ in the two times
that He was filled with the zeal for the Lord and in righteous anger drove the
money changers out of the temple with whips.
5.
VS 32:21-24 - “21 Then
Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you, that you have brought such
great sin upon them?” 22 Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my
lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. 23 “For
they said to me, ‘Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the
man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of
him.’ 24 “I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it
off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came
this calf.”” - Moses asks Aaron what the people did to him
that he created this golden calf, and Aaron blamed it on the people for being
demanding and prone to evil
5.1.
Aaron blames the creating of the golden calf on the
children
5.1.1. It is so typical of us as
people to blame others for our failures.
This response by Aaron is just like that of Adam who after eating of the
forbidden fruit in the garden told the Lord that it was the woman He had given
him that caused him to do this.
5.2.
Aaron also tells a like here as he says that he simply
threw the gold from the people’s ear rings into the fire and ‘out came this
calf.’ His involvement was much more
substantial and his guilt greater.
5.3.
The children of
5.4.
Arthur Pink in his Exodus commentary brings out how that
Moses’ coming down twice from the mountain, as he does in the book of Exodus,
and in between his first and second coming the people making and worshipping a
golden calf, is a type of Israel turning away from the Lord after their
deliverer Jesus Christ came to them the first time, He planning to soon return
to them. The god of
6.
VS 32:25-29 - “25 Now
when Moses saw that the people were out of control—for Aaron had let them get
out of control to be a derision among their enemies— 26 then Moses
stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me!” And all the
sons of Levi gathered together to him. 27 He said to them, “Thus
says the Lord, the God of Israel,
‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth
from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man
his friend, and every man his neighbor.’ ” 28 So the sons of Levi did
as Moses instructed, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day. 29
Then Moses said, “Dedicate yourselves today to the Lord—for every man has been against his
son and against his brother—in order that He may bestow a blessing upon you
today.”” - Moses stood in the gate of the camp and told
the children of Israel that everyone who was for the Lord should come to him,
and the sons of Levi gathered together to him, then he told them to go back and
forth from gate to gate in the camp and kill with the sword every man his
brother with the sword, and they did so and 3,000 were killed, and then, Moses
told the people to dedicate themselves to the Lord
6.1.
Previously, Levi and his brother Simeon, had conspired
together and killed all of the men of the city of
6.2.
Here is an example of the truth that those who are not
with the Lord are against Him.
6.3.
This story is one of utter mayhem and is very
disturbing. The children of
6.4.
It may seem a bit random for Moses to tell the sons of
Levi to go through the camp and slay every man his brother, but we must keep in
mind that all of the rest of the people refused to choose the Lord at this
time, and thus they justly deserved God’s wrath.
6.5.
It is by God’s grace that only 3,000 men of the men of
7.
VS 32:30-33:4 - “30 On
the next day Moses said to the people, “You yourselves have committed a great
sin; and now I am going up to the Lord,
perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” 31 Then Moses returned
to the Lord, and said, “Alas, this
people has committed a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for
themselves. 32 “But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not,
please blot me out from Your book which You have written!” 33 The Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned
against Me, I will blot him out of My book. 34 “But go now, lead the
people where I told you. Behold, My angel shall go before you; nevertheless in
the day when I punish, I will punish them for their sin.” 35 Then
the Lord smote the people, because
of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made. 1 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, “Depart, go up from
here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to
the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants
I will give it.’ 2 “I will send an angel before you and I will drive
out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the
Jebusite. 3 “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for
I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I
might destroy you on the way.” 4 When the people heard this sad
word, they went into mourning, and none of them put on his ornaments.” - The next day Moses told the
people that they had committed a great sin and that he was going up before the
Lord to make atonement for their sin, and then he returned to the Lord and
interceded to the Lord telling Him that if the Lord would not forgive the
people’s sin that he wanted to be blotted out of the Lord’s book himself, and then
the Lord told to go now and that the angel of the Lord would lead them to the
land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the Lord told the people that
He would not go up in their midst
7.1.
Note here that Moses again portrays himself as a type of
Christ as he in interceding for the children of
7.2.
After Moses’ intercession for the people the Lord tells
him that he will blot out of His book the ‘whoever has sinned against’
Him. We are not sure exactly which book
this is that is referenced, and many have speculated about which book this may
be.
7.3.
Next, the Lord tells Moses to go and lead the people and
that His ‘angel shall go before’ Moses.
7.4.
Then, the Lord ‘smote the people’ because of what
they had done in making the calf.
7.5.
The Lord tells Moses that He will send His angel to drive
out ‘the Canaanite, the Amorite, the
Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite’ in the
7.6.
But, now the Lord tells Moses that He will not go up in
their midst because they are an obstinate people and He might destroy them on
the way if He went up in their midst.
7.7.
Finally, we see that the people were mourning and that
none of them ‘put on his ornaments.’
8.
CONCLUSIONS:
8.1.
As we consider
this story and how we should respond to it, we ought to make sure that we learn
from this example for the history of the children of
8.2.
The mayhem and
chaos of this story along with the sad tragedy for the nation of