The Golden Calf
Exodus 32:1-10
"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."
Aaron answered them, "Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me." So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 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, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."
When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord." So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burn offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 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, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.'
"I have seen these people," the LORD said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people. 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." Exodus 32:1-10
Many are aware of this story if they have been a Christian for very long and most probably shake their heads in wonderment. I for one can never read this without picturing the Cecil B. DeMille movie where I think he so brilliantly captured this particular part of the story. I remember how bothered I was, even as a child, when I saw the movie or read this passage and saw how the people and Aaron turned so easily and so quickly from God.
But that was just a movie and this just a short ten verses out of the big story so let's go back a few chapters and flesh out the background just a little.
In the 19th chapter of Exodus we can see that 3 months had passed since the Israelites had left Egypt and now they arrived at the Desert of Sinai. Moses went up the mountain to speak with God and here God made a promise to Moses that this people would be a holy nation to God. He gave them the Ten Commandments that they were to keep and many of the rules that they should follow to worship God and to live organized lives.
During all this time the people of Israel heard the thunder and the incredibly loud trumpet sound. They saw the cloud over the mountain as well as the lightning and the thick smoke. And they felt the mountain as it trembled violently and they were in fear of God and according to Moses, this was how God wanted them to be so that they would not sin.
In the 24th chapter of Exodus we read that Moses was accompanied by the leaders of Israel, including his brother Aaron and at this point these leaders were granted the great privilege of seeing a magnificent representation of the glory of God.
Here Moses leaves his brother and these elders and as he left them the cloud covered the mountain and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai for six days and on the seventh God called to Moses and "To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights." Exodus 24:17-18
It was during this 40 day period that God gave to Moses the instructions for the tabernacle but it was evidently 40 days too long for the people of Israel which brings us to today's scripture that we started with.
All the people of Israel had heard the Ten Commandments and all had heard God's proposed covenant with them. They had experienced the generations of slavery under Pharaoh, had witnessed and lived the miraculous deliverance from bondage. These same people had seen water delivered to them from rocks, had been fed day and night because of God's manna. Finally as we just read they had recently seen, heard and felt the glory of God on Mount Sinai.
But it wasn't enough for them. Their main leader's absence was all they needed to forget all the wonderful things that the Father had done in delivering and taking care of them. In not much more than a month's time they had forgotten the commands they had agreed to follow as we read back in Exodus 20:1-5a "And God spoke all these words: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. "You shall have no other gods before me. "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them;"
As we read in Exodus 24:17 "To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain" when Moses entered the cloud. It only stands to reason that if he was still with God this cloud and consuming fire was probably still before their eyes and yet they and Aaron still sinned against God!
Makes you mad doesn't it? But should it?
Stop to think about the fact that the people of Israel did not receive God's wrath even though they deserved it. He still made them into a holy nation that He would set apart for Himself.
And Aaron, with everything you know about God, would you have been surprised if God would have instructed Moses to strike him down? But He didn't, God still made a priestly line that began with Aaron.
The people of Israel and Aaron actually still had the futures that God had originally planned for them because of His great grace!
And how about you, have you ever seen God's miracles, heard God's voice, recevied blessing after blessing, how about a healing or things you cannot put into words and still you sinned against Him, sometimes even after barely a month's time?
Yet, God will still give you His grace. Like Moses who interceded on behalf of the Israelites, so do we have the Great Interceder and not a man but Jesus who sits at the right hand of God, but only if we have accepted Him as our Lord and Savior.
If you haven't, you have no one to intercede on your behalf with the Father, and if you have, what are you doing to share the gospel with others who have not?
Share the gospel!
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
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