The Golden Calf Part 2 – Avoiding the Judgement of God. (Exodus 32: 15-35)

15 And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. 16 Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. 17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” 18 But he said:“It is not the noise of the shout of victory,
 Nor the noise of the cry of defeat,
 But the sound of singing I hear.”
(Exodus 32: 15-18)

So Moses is now coming down off the mountain, and all of a sudden Joshua appears. Well, we've already noted that when Moses was at the top of the mountain by himself, so where did Joshua come from? The suggestion is that he was camped halfway up the mountain, waiting for Moses to come down. At any rate, when Joshua hears the noise, he says, 'The voice sounds like war, but it's not a victory. It's not the wailing of defeat. It's singing, they're having a party.' Joshua says listen the people are singing, and many suggest involved, as I've already said, this involves drunkenness and immorality.

Verse 19 says,

 So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So, Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it.

(Exodus 32: 19-20)

We started out in the previous scene with God getting angry. Now it's Moses' turn, and he gets so angry he throws down the tablets with the commandments and breaks them. They people broke them first spiritually, he breaks them physically, that which was written by God in stone, literally. Then he takes the calf and it’s frame and throws it in the fire. And he takes the calf, grinds it down to powder, puts it in water, and makes them drink it. What's that about? Well, the obvious symbol of them tasting the consequences of their sin. Moses, then says to Aaron, 

'What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?'

(Exodus 32: 21)

Now, who was in charge? Aaron. And he says, 'Aaron, what in the world were you thinking? You did this to bring this sin upon them.' So, best stop. What did you do? Now, this is where the story gets really interesting. Aaron says,

Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil.

(Exodus 32: 22)

 Instead of answering Moses' question of why he did what he did, Aaron told Moses not to be angry because he knew that it was the people's heart that was evil. What's he doing? What is Aaron doing here? 

This is what I call, blame-shifting. Now, you remember back in the Garden of Eden when the Lord came and said, 'Hey, Adam, what's going on?' Adam said, 'Well, you know that woman you gave me…. 

I would like to submit to you that one of the great characteristics of human nature is we blame-shift. We rationalize and blame-shift so that we don't accept responsibility for our own actions. People love to study psychology, and I'm included. Maybe psychology can explain to me what's going on with me and others as well. Let me give you a major insight into the way people function. I've read a lot of psychology books and not figured this out but I did figure it out when I read Genesis. It's all in Genesis, people rationalize and blame-shift so as not to accept personal responsibility. And that is exactly what Aaron is doing. He's blaming the people. 'It’s not my fault, they have all got evil hearts.' It gets worse. Read verse 23. 

23 For they said to me, ‘Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So, they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”

(Exodus 32: 23-24)

And voila, this calf just popped out. I mean, I threw the gold in the fire, but I mean, it just popped out.' Remember when we started this passage yesterday and I said make not of who made this calf? The text specifically says, 'Aaron took a tool and made the calf.' And Aaron says to Moses, calm down. Let me just explain it. This was because of the wicked heart of these people.  So, I admit I took the gold, but I didn't make the calf. I mean, it just popped out of the fire all on its own.' 

Now, let me just tell you that when you start blame-shifting, the next step is you're going to start lying. And that's exactly what he did. This passage is a great study in human nature. He just now lies.

25 Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained (for Aaron had not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies), 26 then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side—come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. 27 And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.’

(Exodus 32: 25-27)

Verse 25 says, they were “unrestrained.' The Hebrew word translated 'unrestrained' means to let loose, to show a lack of restraint. But the King James Version translates it 'naked.' It means out of control. One modern translation says they were running wild. Another says they had broken loose. So, some think that they were literally naked as the Egyptians were when they performed their religious rituals. They had deserted their national God, but the real point is Moses says, 'If you're with me, stand over here.' And the people that showed up on his side were the Levites, and then he says, 'Go through the camp and kill those rebels.' As a matter of fact, he says, 'Go through the camp and kill your brother first, every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.' 

Some commentators say that 'brother' here is to be taken literally. They killed their brother or their relative, their close relative if they weren’t on the Lord’s side. Others say it just refers to their fellow Israelites. At any rate, God's punishment of the rebels was that severe because of the seriousness of their offense." "It was also merciful. How in the world was that merciful? The answer is that according to verse 28, only three thousand men died. There were 600,000 men, so these were the major instigators of the plot. Others will die later in a plague but at the moment verse 28 says,

'So, the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day.' Then Moses said, “Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.”

(Exodus 32: 28-29)

They were to consecrate themselves to the Lord, that he might again bless them. The Levites' blessing was that God chose them to be the tribe of priests, so they stood with the Lord, and the Lord blessed them. 

Alright, there's more to the story.

30 Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” 31 Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! 32 Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.”

(Exodus 32: 30-32)

Moses is negotiating again. He's interceding again and saying, 'Lord, forgive, forgive the Lord. But if you won't forgive them, if that's not what you want to do, then let me give my life for theirs. What an illustration of love and many would say this prefiguring what Jesus did for us by dying for us.' In Moses' we see his great love for the Israelites as their mediator, not just in his intercessory prayer but in his willingness to die for the people. Being blotted out of God's book refers to physical death.

33 And the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. 34 Now therefore, go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Behold, My Angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit for punishment, I will visit punishment upon them for their sin.” 35 So the Lord plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron made.

(Exodus 32: 33-35)

So the Lord gives three responses to Moses offer. Number one, He refused it. That's in verse 33. The second is He said, 'Now I want you to go lead them to the promised land.' And the third is He forgave them but still sent a plague among the people because of their sin with the golden calf.

Someone once said, 'God here explains a principle in His dealing with people here. Individual sin brings individual responsibility that leads finally to individual judgment. God is not saying that everyone will bear the punishment of his own sins, precluding substitution, but everyone is responsible for his own sins.' So, God punished them, but He did forgive them. Indicated by the fact He says, the Lord says, take them into the promised land.' 

Summary.

Alright, the sum of this is simple. If Moses is absent, the Israelites made a golden calf. And when he returned, he destroyed the calf, punished the leaders, challenged the people to follow him, and Moses intervened and interceded for them meaning Gd punished individuals but allowed the rest to continue to be led towards the promised land.

Let me wrap this up by suggesting that this is pretty severe stuff. A golden calf was made, and three thousand people died, and the rest of the people suffered a plague of some kind.

There's a principle here, and that is, this is the first general sin of disobedience on the part of Israel, and so God comes down pretty quick with a pretty heavy hand. Often in the Bible, the first act of disobedience receives full judgment so that everybody knows God's view of the matter. The parallel for this is in Acts chapter 5, where Ananias and Sapphira lied and dropped dead immediately. Now, that's pretty dramatic. At the beginning of Israel's existence as a nation they sinned and three thousand died because of their idolatry, meaning by their building of the golden calf, they wer breaking the first and second commandment. Well, that happened throughout the Old Testament. God didn't kill them every time. In the New Testament, the first thing after Pentecost, Ananias and Sapphira lied and bam, they died. Let me just tell you, if everybody in Christianity died for telling a lie, there wouldn't be many people left, right? The point is that one of the principles in Scripture is that God sometimes judges individuals upfront, straight away to teach everyone a lesson.  I think we all have a sin nature, and sometimes when we are children or teenagers is when we are likely to do something very wrong for the first time. Personally, I think one the finest things that can happen to a young teenager, like thirteen or fourteen, is that he does something really wrong, is that they get caught, and gets punished upfront, quick. One of the finest things that could happen to him because if he does it and doesn't get caught, then he gets the idea he can do it again.

However, let me go back to my phrase, 'When the cat's away, the mice come out to play.' Does that fit this passage or what? The question is, are you the mouse or are you the cat? What you are is what you are in the dark when you think the cat is away. So, if you're tempted to be the mouse in this situation, let me just remind you that the cat always comes home. And that's what we need to remember. You may think the cat's away, but in this case, the cat, if you'll pardon the reference to the Lord, He's coming back, and He knows what you’ve done and when you did it. But the real lesson here, I think, is we need to be with the cat. We need to be the ones who get angry when we see sin and disobedience, but instead of seeking vengeance, we interceded, we intercede on the people behalf that that they might be drawn to repent and that God should not intervened just yet.

We're all going to have people in our lives who are like the children of Israel. They're going to disobey the Lord, and while that may disappoint or even anger you, and perhaps in some cases, it should, what we really need to do is be like Moses. We need to intercede, intervene, and go instruct them in the ways of the Lord. So, the lesson tonight is very simple: Don't be a mouse that plays, be the cat that prays."