Created Idols

Exodus 32

Created Idols

Intro: When there are major changes in your life, like this COVID-19 stay at home order and most everything has stopped, you see what you really can and can't live with. For those people who love sports or concerts, there has been a drastic change. When you say you cannot live without football or baseball, it is hyperbole or an exaggeration, but now it is proven that you must live without it for now.

But we see the people and things we truly cannot live without. Doctors, and other medical personnel, store workers, and IT workers who keep you internet up so you can work, watch movies and talk to your friends and family via phone or video chat.

When you can’t visit or potentially visit for big events or even everyday things, it becomes glaringly obvious what is actually real and important in your life.

In our Spiritual lives we must do the same things. We have to declutter what gets in between God and Us. And we have to concentrate on and ensure we do not make other things in our lives on equal footing or worse, to replace God in our lives and our allegiance.

Read Verses: Exodus 20:1-6. 32:1-6

Main Point: We violate God’s command when we make anything else god in our lives.

I. You May be Tempted to Look for Something Else (1-6)

In Chapter 24, Moses and Joshua go up to the mountain of God for forty days and forty nights and leave Aaron and Hur in charge. So while we are reading chapters 25-31, The Israelites are waiting for Moses and. It has been about 39 days. And the people cannot stand it any more. They are tired of waiting and they are ready to move on.

The people are Antsy and Aaron,who is in charge, does not want a riot. So he asks for all the jewelry and he melts all the gold down and then makes a statue.

The people see this statue and fallout, These are your gods

And in good baptist fashion, he proclaims they shall have a feast to the Lord.

So the golden calf episode is one of the key events in Israelite life. It is thought to be “the nearest equivalent to the concept of original sin” in post-biblical Jewish literature, according to M. Aberbach and L. Smolar. The placement of the event in Exodus and its role throughout the Hebrew Bible support this conclusion. The construction of the golden calf in Exodus 32 occurs at the very moment when God is handing the tablets of the law to Moses and establishing the covenant with the people. The golden calf signifies the Israelites’ rejection of covenant, and it prompts the divine desire to destroy the nation. Yahweh states to Moses: “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.”

There are connections between Exodus 32, Deut 9:7–10:11, and 1 Kgs 12:26–32. The three stories are clearly related, even sharing specific motifs.

The golden calves are a religious and political metaphor in the Deuteronomistic History. They represent the apostasy of Jeroboam I (1 Kgs 12:26–32), and, indeed, of all monarchs—even reforming kings like Jehu, who destroyed Baal worship, but continued “the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan” (2 Kgs 10:29). The golden calves are the reason for the destruction of the northern kingdom (2 Kgs 17:7–23). It fell because “they forsook all the commands of Yahweh their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves” (2 Kgs 17:16). The two calves are also at the center of a range of forbidden worship practices in the Deuteronomistic History, including the Asherah, astrology, child sacrifice, sorcery, and high places.

When people want to control or become Gods or make something lose a god, in part they do it because God is so far away and the object or person in front of you.

The Israelites had just made a covenant with God about six weeks before this where they swore to follow God and be his people.

And then they broke it.

If you are a Christian, it doesn’t matter how long it has been since you were saved. The covenant still stands. God's covenant is everlasting. It is made with His word and His sons sacrifice and resurrection.

Application: We must not manufacture a god because we think God is not near or capable.

God does not need a stand in or a helper. He is quite capable

2 Corinthians 9:8

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed;

Ephesians 3:20

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,

TS: We can say God is my everything or my first thing, but God knows your ranking system

II. God Knows where Your Heart Lies (7-14)

In the meantime of the crowd making the calf and getting ready for the feast, God and Moses are on the mountain. God explains to Moses in verse 7 The Lord spoke to Moses: “Go down at once! For your people you brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly. 8 They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them; they have made for themselves an image of a calf. They have bowed down to it, sacrificed to it, and said, ‘Israel, these are your gods, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.’

God is omniscient. He knows all and he sees all. He knows the type of people he is dealing with. A “stiff necked people” he calls them. And he tells Moses let me alone so I can consume them in order that I might make a great nation with you. Let me wipe out the nation so we can start over.

Moses is part of the plan. And he knows that and he knows that God is faithful to His people and his promise to Abraham Isaac and Jacob. And he asks God,what would the Egyptians say? You brought the people out of Egypt just to destroy them in the Desert? Moses acts as a mediator already for his people and you can see the difference in Moses' actions and the actions of Aaron.

Moses is before God pleading on behalf of the people, and aAron just made another god to make the people happy.

The writer brings this scene to a close by an explicit reference to its effect on God. Yahweh changes his mind regarding his intention to destroy Israel. If this sentence is read by itself, it makes the God of Israel as arbitrary as Zeus. If it is read in its full context, it epitomizes the essential paradox of the Hebrew faith: God is ‘merciful and gracious … but will not clear the guilty’ (34.7).

God knows you struggle with this that you are a stiff necked person as well. It is the reason The law was given. To show you just how stiff-necked or stubborn you are.

Application: Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can love God and everything else too.

Aaron didn’t see anything wrong with making the calf, and then having a feast for Yahweh. He thought they were one in the same essentially. He combined what they did in Egypt or saw in Egypt with what they had learned from their Hebew ancestors about God.

God knows you struggle with this. Trying to Serve God and live in the world. We cannot serve two masters.

III. Take Responsibility for Your Wrong Doings (15-24)

Moses comes down from the mountain and he is so angry He smashes the stone tablets, written by God with his words on them.

In itself the action would suggest such a finality given the significance of the tablets outlined above. Yet in the light of v. 14 the reader knows that Yahweh has not rejected his people. Therefore the covenant is not abrogated, despite the people’s unfaithfulness, but somehow God will be merciful and restore his people.

Moses finds Aaron and asks him what happens. Listen to Aaron’s words 21 Then Moses asked Aaron, “What did these people do to you that you have led them into such a grave sin?”

22 “Don’t be enraged, my lord,” Aaron replied. “You yourself know that the people are intent on evil. 23 They said to me, ‘Make gods for us who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’ 24 So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off,’ and they gave it to me. When I threw it into the fire, out came this calf!”

It was like the fire made the calf. I just chucked all the gold jewelry into the fire and poof, out came a statue. I’m not sure how that happened. But the writer tells us back in verse 4 that Aaron fashioned the calf with an engraving tool.

Application: when you realize your sin, take ownership of it and repent.

TS: Because you have this lie to choose a side.

IV. You Must Choose a Side (25-29)

Moses looks around and sees the people in this unholy party that is definitely not a feast to honor Yahweh and has had enough. He Stands at the edge of the camp and calls Who is on the Lord’s side?

It is thought that the people who committed the sins were non Hebrews who had just escaped with the Hebrews and Moses but were not necessarily God followers or truly understood who Yahweh really is.

Amidst all the faithless people Moses calls for the faithful; Those who stand with God.

Breviary Childs explains “Moses now assumes the role of prophet and in one of the rare usages of the idiom in the Pentateuch, proclaims the divine word: ‘Thus says Yahweh’. The word is of judgment directed to the Levites as its agent who immediately proceed to execute the awesome punishment. Verse 29 contains the heart of the narrative. ‘Today’ marks the decisive moment in the life of the tribe, and as in Ps. 2.7, it designates the act of special ordination. At the cost of son and brother the Levites have won their position as the blessed of the Lord. Implicitly the story condemns Aaron as representative of the old priesthood for his failure to separate rigorously between the faith of Yahweh and its rivals. The Levites were faithful at an enormous cost.”

Application: Are You Faithful or are you Faithless

It will cost you friends and family to follow God and not the world. And that is tough.

But being away from God for eternity is tougher. It is better to be uncomfortable now than be unbearably miserable for eternity.

God Cannot abide by unholinessand unfaithfulness. And so people earn some of the wrath of God through the Prophet Moses.

TS: But there is one person who goes ahead for you to face God on the people’s behalf

V. The Mediator Goes on His Own (30-35)

30 The following day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a grave sin. Now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I will be able to atone for your sin.”

31 So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a grave sin; they have made a god of gold for themselves. 32 Now if you would only forgive their sin. But if not, please erase me from the book you have written.”

Moses recognized that the people sinned and so he did not wait for God to call him back u to the mountain to talk about things He went willingly to perhaps make an atonement for them.

Such a total commitment of Moses to Israel is a central feature of his role as mediator and intercessor. Interestingly, however, the writer does not dwell on it at this point, although he develops it later (33:11ff.), but directs attention to the response of Yahweh, where concession is mingled with warning.

People will be punished, it was God sent a plague on the people who committed the sin. This is similar to how Genesis 3 ends after the Fall; judgment is pronounced on the serpent, the man and the woman.

And so as Moses intervened for His people for the Old covenant, In order to preserve God’s people Jesus is the greater mediator for the new covenant. He interceded for the entire world. His mission was to restore the world.

The writer of Hebrews, speaking of Jesus says For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. Hebrews 9:15

Hebrews 8:6

But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

And Paul explains to Timothy

5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time.

7 For this I was appointed a herald, an apostle (I am telling the truth; I am not lying), and a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. 1 Timothy 2:5-6

Conclusion

This is the good news that even though people have sinned the mediator Jesus Christ, God the son, has atoned for the sins of those who hear his voice.

So we need to repent when we are making idols of things that take our focus away from God. God knows when you are truly sorry. And he understands we are a stiff necked people. But his ever loving and patient character, His Hesed, allows Him to wait for us to come around.

Hebrews 12: 28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.