Such Great Sin

Psalm 106:19–23 NIV

19 At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. 20 They exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass. 21 They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, 22 miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. 23 So he said he would destroy them— had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.

“Father, we pray that you would open our eyes, convict our hearts, move us to repentance. May your Word, by your Spirit, guide us. For Jesus’ sake and in His name we pray. Amen.”

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“Where is he?”

“When’s he coming back?”

“How long does it take, really?”

“I mean, come on! This is getting ridiculous!”

“It’s been, what? 40 days?”

Moses had been on Mt. Sinai with the Lord—receiving instruction from the Lord about the tabernacle, priests, sacrifices, etc. Moses was gone for a little more than a month. 40 days and 40 nights. And in his absence, what happens at the foot of the mountain of God is unreal. If it wasn’t so believable, it would be entirely unbelievable.

Let’s remember the context: the people of God have received the Law (the Ten Words, Exodus 20); and they’ve received the practical application of the Law (Exodus 20-23). And then, in Exodus 24, the people of God promise to keep the Law; they vow to do so. Twice we read:

Exodus 24:3 NIV

3 When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.”

Exodus 24:7 NIV

7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.”

A covenant is struck between the Lord Yahweh and the Israelites, sealed in blood.

But it doesn’t take long at all for the people to break the covenant, and hard.

“We will do everything the Lord has said…that is until Moses steps away for a little bit.”

“We’ll do everything the Lord has said until we become impatient with Lord and His servant, Moses. And then, we’ll do the exact opposite of what the Lord has said.”

Exodus 32:1–6 NIV

1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” 2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Idolatry is Rebellion Against the Lord

What the people of God do here in Moses’ brief absence is shocking; it’s so far past wrong, they’ve lost sight of what wrong is.

They break the 1st and 2nd Commandments in one fell swoop.

To be fair, the Israelites who are encamped in the dessert are still mostly Egyptian in thought and practice. These people had lived their entire lives in Egypt, among the Egyptian people, surrounded by the Egyptians’ religious practices. This kind of idolatry and idol worship was commonplace.

It doesn’t mean that the Israelites are justified in what they’ve done; not even a little bit. But it helps us makes sense of how they were so quick to do something so blatantly sinful. It’s what they were used to. It’s what the world around them was doing.

Exodus 32:1 NIV

1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

The people want a tangible, visible god. Something they could see and touch and make sacrifices to.

It’s almost as if they forgot the God who had gone before them in a pillar of cloud and fire, the God who had done great and mighty things in their sight.

As for this fellow Moses, they forget that Moses is up on the mountain meeting with the Lord. They saw Moses and the other 73 men go up on the mountain to meet with God. When God called Moses to join Him further up the mountain, the other 70+ men went back to the rest of the people, and I have to assume, told them what Moses was doing.

What the people had wasn’t good enough. They wanted something else. And in their wanting, they sin in the most severe manner imaginable.

The sad part—the really sad part to me—is that Aaron (Moses’ brother and high priest of Israel) goes along with all of it!

When they came to Aaron, gathered around him (even if they were aggressive about it as some think the word gathered infers) and said, “Come on, man, and make us some gods who will go before us..”, Aaron claps his hands and says, “Okie dokie, let’s do it; sounds good!”

Aaron should have said, “God forbid! The Lord alone deserves our worship, the Lord and no one else; the Lord and nothing else! Were you not paying attention to the Ten Words? Don’t you remember the commandments the Lord Himself spoke to us?

Exodus 20:3 NIV

3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

Exodus 20:4 NIV

4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

“You sinful people! Repent! Turn from your wicked ways and return to God!”

If only Aaron had taken a stand for what was right and said anything of the sort; if only Aaron took steps to prevent the people from their wanton disregard for the things of God.

If only Aaron had a spine and a conscience. Aaron not only allows their pagan idolatry, but he helps them in it. He encourages them in their idolatry. Aaron leads the people, aiding them in their spiritual prostitution. He takes them by the hand and leads them into full-blown idol worship.

Left to ourselves, we will worship something other than the living God. As my good friend, John Calvin says: “The human heart is an idol factory.”

We’ve spoken about idolatry several times, and that’s because the Bible has so much to say about it. It creeps up in almost every book of the Bible. The people of God in the OT and the Church in the NT and Christians today have an idolatry problem.

It’s a problem—prevalent and perennial. It shows up over and over, again and again. Why? Because our hearts are constantly giving to people and to things affection and worship and allegiance that belongs only to God. We give our hearts to many, many gods.

You might not be worshipping and bowing down to a golden calf, but you have something (or several things) that you would have trouble living without.

If you can’t imagine your life without that item or that person or that (fill in the blank), then whatever that is, is an idol. An idol is whatever you center part of your life around, that which gives you your identity, that which you cannot do without.

For you, it might be money or your job. Maybe it’s family—your spouse or children or grandchildren. Or country. Fame, status, power, respect, tradition.

Now, maybe you don’t idolize any of those. I don’t know your heart, but I do know something true about your heart (it’s an idol factory). I promise you: you have idols because you have a heart—sinful and deceitful above all else (Jeremiah 17:9).

We will find something to worship; it’s part of what it means to be human. And part of what it means to be human is to have a nature bent toward sin and idolatry.

All idolatry—even that which is common, especially that which is common—is rebellion. Idolatry is cosmic treason. Idolatry is taking praise which belongs to the Creator and giving it to the creature; exchanging the glory of the immortal God for mortal, temporary, earthly stuff.

“Lord, help us.”

The people of God rebel against the Lord in the most blatant and heinous way.

Exodus 32:7–14 NIV

7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ 9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” 11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’ ” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

The Lord Sees and Hates Idolatry

The Lord’s anger toward His people is justified. It’s righteous anger. He is right to want to destroy them.

They have sinned against Him. They have broken His covenant. They have willfully disobeyed. They deserve His wrath.

Sound like anyone you know? It should; you look them in the mirror (in the selfie, in the SnapChat) every morning, multiple times a day.

The Lord sees what these people are up to, and He is angry.

The Israelites aren’t sure where Moses is, and might even think the Lord is off on vacation. But the God of Israel—the Lord Yahweh—neither slumbers nor sleeps. He is not absent. He sees. He knows what the people are like. He is fully aware of them and their activities.

These people are corrupt. Quick to turn away. They make an idol. Bow down to it. Sacrifice to it. Ascribe to it the work of the Lord, saying, “these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

God is angry. Righteously angry.

“God, who seeth all things, taketh notice of and is much displeased with the sin of having any other god.” - Daily Baptist Catechism

Yahweh is here and now, at the people’s wish, being represented by an idol—the very sort of thing clearly forbidden by the 2nd Commandment.

The people of God worship this manmade golden calf. Worship indicating they believe it was a god.

They sacrifice to it, proving their belief that it had the power to bless them and save them.

They openly state that it represented the gods they now had chosen to believe in, violating the 1st Commandment which forbids the worship of anything but the One True God.

They associate this calf with Yahweh in some sort of hybrid religion (which God will not tolerate); He will not share His glory with another, with anything else.

The peoples’ choice of a dumb idol was an outright rejection of God.

“What they could see and touch at their convenience was what they wanted—a god who would let them live as they wished and have a good time when they wanted to and who would not impose His covenant requirements on them.” - Douglas Stuart

I know a lot of people who believe in such a god, a lot of “churches” that promote such a god, a god who has no standards, doesn’t care about obedience; a god who just wants people to live however they please, to enjoy their best life now.

The Lord tells Moses to leave Him so that His anger may burn against them and that [He] might destroy them.

God is pushing Moses toward intercession. God could have destroyed the people in a second. God declaring His holy anger is a way of inviting intervention.

In Amos 7, God showed Amos what He might do to Israel, but Amos interceded, and God relented.

God threatened to destroy Nineveh in 40 days, but Jonah knew this was actually an invitation for the Ninevites to repent.

When God relents it does not mean God changed His mind. Moses seeks the favor of the Lord, recounts all the Lord had done for this people and for their ancestors—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel.

The Lord didn’t change His plans; Moses carried out God’s plans. Moses expressed his faith in the goodness of God, and so it came to pass that the Lord’s mediator turned away the wrath of God.

In the end, God sends a plague on the people, but it was less of a punishment than they deserved from the Lord who sees and hates idolatry.

Exodus 32:15–29 NIV

15 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. 16 The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. 17 When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.” 18 Moses replied: “It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear.” 19 When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. 20 And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it. 21 He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?” 22 “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. 23 They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ 24 So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” 25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. 26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. 27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’ ” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

Because the Lord sees and hates idolatry,

The Leaders of God’s People Must Likewise See and Hate Idolatry

Moses heads back down the mountain with the tablets of the covenant law in his hands, tablets written upon by God Himself.

Joshua, Moses’ aid, hears noise coming from the people camped at the foot of the mountain.

Moses knows right away what it is. It’s not the sound of war—not of victory or defeat; it’s the sound of singing.

It’s the sound of raucous worship. They are (v. 6) indulging in revelry before their idol.

Moses sees the calf and the dancing. And Moses is angry—so angry, he breaks the tablets.

This is righteous anger. (We have an artist’s rendering of what Moses looked like. Show Picture).

The Leaders of God’s People Must Likewise See and Hate Idolatry

Moses then goes cow-tipping, takes the stupid golden calf and burns it in the fire.

Then he grinds it to powder, scatters it on the water, and makes the people of Israel ingest it so that they’d pass it as waste.

Heavy-metal toxicity aside, hopefully the people got the point. What the people were doing was as sinful as it was stupid, and it had to be undone.

Moses is angry, righteously.

Sadly, Aaron is not.

Aaron is a leader without conviction. He is complicit. He went along with the people in their foolish journey into idolatry. He encouraged it. He aided and abetted their spiritual felony. And then he lies about it: “I threw [their gold] into the fire, and out came this calf! What do you know?!”

Far from being angry with the idolatry of the people, Aaron takes part with them, fashions their idols, builds and altar to it, calls for the worship of it.

I must admit: I’m a lot like Aaron. I have been complicit. I have gone along with idolatry in the church. But no more. If it costs me my job or if I lose respect because of it, so be it.

The leaders of God’s people must see idolatry for what it is and they must be righteously angry about it, whenever they see it.

Idolatry is not okay. Just because it’s something we grew up with or it’s something that we’ve always done doesn’t make it right. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.

The Lord must be first. He must be the ONLY one who gets any of our worship. He must be our sole focus and the focus of our souls.

Moses draws a line in the sand. He stands at the front of the camp: “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.”

All the Levites rally to his side. That would be Aaron and all the rest of the Levite tribe. This shows that Aaron repented of his idolatry, his worshipping of another. He repented and reestablished loyalty to Yahweh and Yahweh’s covenant.

God made it clear to Moses that those who where committed to the idolatry had to be cut off from Israel.

It’s hard to justify the killing of idolaters (we don’t do that today). But for Moses, the idea of leaving idolaters in the midst of Israel to influence others away from the Lord—that’s what was impossible to justify.

The Levites, swords strapped to their side, were to go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, carefully approaching every person and finding out whether or not they intended to return to the Lord Yahweh, abandoning their idolatry.

Those committed to their idolatry must be killed—no matter who they were, brother, friend, [or] neighbor. This is the wages of sin, the severity of sin; it highlights the reality of judgment and the absolutely need to repent.

Those actively repenting from their idolatry would be spared.

What the Levites did in killing friends and family must have been agonizingly difficult for them; but it was being faithful to God’s will.

Israel, at this point, was, for a moment, once again free of idolatry, and the Lord Yahweh was their sole focus of worship.

May that be said of us, church.

Exodus 32:30–35 NIV

30 The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” 31 So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” 33 The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. 34 Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.” 35 And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.

We Must All Confess Our Idolatry and Seek Forgiveness

Make no mistake, idolatry is sin—what a great sin these people have committed.

So, let’s go ahead and confess it.

I worship at the altars of comfort and respect—I feel I need both of those.

And I am, almost all the time, more concerned with what people think of me than with what God thinks of me—more concerned with man’s approval than I am with God’s approval (contra Galatians 1:10).

Pray for me. Pray that I would destroy those idols, one-by-one.

Pray for me, and know that I’m praying for you, praying that you would treasure Christ above all else. I’m praying that Christ would be first in your life, but more than that, I’m praying that Christ would be your all. That Jesus would have your undivided worship and allegiance. That Jesus would have 100% of your heart.

Moses confesses the peoples’ sin, their idolatry, and seeks their forgiveness.

Before Moses goes back to the Lord, do you notice what he says to the people: “…perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”

“Perhaps.” Moses isn’t sure if he can right this wrong. Moses even offers himself in the place of the people. Moses could not die for the people, though, because Moses is a sinner.

“Perhaps.”

P.G. Ryken: “God is willing to let someone die for someone else’s sin, but the only sacrifice He can accept is a perfect sacrifice, unstained by sin. So Moses could not do it…he could not make atonement for [the peoples’] sin.”

There is no “perhaps” with our Mediator. Jesus has made perfect atonement, once-for-all-time propitiation for sin. Jesus Himself was the offering that turned away the wrath of God.

We, guilty of idolatry, have no hope apart from Jesus.

Idolatry is a great sin. And there’s punishment for it. For the people of Israel, there was a sample of God’s wrath—a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.

And for those who did not repent and seek forgiveness, the Lord said He would blot them out of His book. The person who tries to enter eternal life without their sins being forgiven will never succeed.

Verse 33 is one of the Bible’s stronger statements about the absolute necessity of the forgiveness of sins, and therefore, the absolute necessity of a Savior.

1 Corinthians 6:9–10 NIV

9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Do you see idolaters mentioned there? They will not inherit the kingdom of God. That’s the punishment. Unconfessed, unrepentant idolatry will lead to eternal damnation because you’re trusting in and worshipping something other than God.

But, friends, there is hope. There is Good News.

1 Corinthians 6:9–11 NIV

9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Idolatry warrants punishment. For those who belong to God by faith in His Son, the Good News is that Jesus took the punishment we deserve. He took our punishment, if we are in Him—and He washed us with His blood, made us holy, and made us right with God.

There’s no “perhaps” about it. It’s done. In Christ, we are not idolaters; that’s what we were. Jesus has paid the price for our idolatry, for all our sin (past, present, and future).

Confess. Repent. Trust in Jesus.

Friend, beware. If you do not belong to Christ, you will face punishment greater than any plague. Your name will be blotted out of the Lord’s Book of Life. You will, on your own, pay the price for your sins, for your idolatry—eternal separation from God. Hell.

See your sin. See your Savior. Turn from your idols to serve the living God.

Run to Jesus. Give your life to Him and He will give you life! Abundant life! Eternal life!

Worship Him. Worship Him alone.