National Apostacy - Exodus 31:18 - 32:35

Welcome to Faith Bible Church.

We will be continuing on our series in Exodus.

We have just finished one giant section on the

tabernacle on how God will dwell among God's people,

right?

Up until now, God's people did not have an access point, a

location to meet with God.

God would show up here and there to special individuals over a long period of

time, but the tabernacle, the tent where God's presence would dwell

was a special privilege and blessing for the people of God in Israel because

now they could consistently dwell in God's presence, that God would

be with them.

So please turn with me to Exodus 31, verse 18

to the end of chapter 32.

31, verse 18 to the end of chapter 32.

And when he had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, he gave Moses two

tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God.

Now, when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron

and said to him, come, make us gods that shall go before us for as for this

Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

And Aaron said to them, break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters,

and bring them to me.

So all the people broke off their golden earrings, which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.

And he received the gold from their hand and he fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molded

calf.

Then they said, this is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.

So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it and Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow is a

feast to the Lord.

Then they rose early on the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings.

And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

And the Lord said to Moses, go, get down for your people whom you brought out of the

land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.

They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them.

They have made themselves a molded calf and worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, this is your

God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.

And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people and indeed it is a stiff necked people.

Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them

and I will make of you a great nation.

Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God and said, Lord, why does your wrath burn

hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and

with a mighty hand?

Why should the Egyptians speak and say he brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them

from the face of the earth?

Turn from your fierce wrath and relent from this harm to your people.

Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own

self and said to them, I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and all

this land that I have spoken of, I give to your descendants and they shall inherit it forever.

So, the Lord relented from the harm which he said he would do to his people.

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 side they were written.

Now, the tablets were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the

tablets.

And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, there's a noise of war

in the camp.

But he said, it is not the noise of the shouting of victory nor the noise of the cry of defeat but the

sound of singing I hear.

So, it was as soon as he came near the camp and 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.

And Moses said to Aaron, what did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin

upon them?

So, Aaron said, do not let the anger of my Lord become hot.

You know the people, they are set on evil.

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 had become of him.

And I said to them, whoever has any gold, let them break it off.

So, they gave it to me.

I cast it into the fire and this calf came out.

Now, when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained for Aaron had not restrained them to their

shame among their enemies, 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 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 of the

entrance throughout the camp and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion and

every man his neighbor.

So, the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses and about 3 ,000 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.

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.

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.

Yet now, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, I pray blot me out of your book which you have

written.

And the Lord said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot him out of my book.

Now, therefore go, lead the people to that 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.

So, the Lord plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron made.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let us pray.

Father, we are so thankful that we worship a merciful God despite our

backstabbing, despite our idolatrous relationships with

things and other people.

You are so merciful to forgive us in Christ who died

for our sin, bearing all of our sin on the cross so that he would face the hot wrath

that we deserved so that we would be forgiven and adopted into your family.

Father, we pray that you would open our hearts to understand how gracious and

merciful you are and how holy you are.

In Jesus' name, amen.

This chapter, chapter 32, it's rather a dark passage

right after the gracious instruction that God gave to Moses

so that he may dwell among them, that God of the universe

would live, reside with his people.

Yet his people could not wait any longer and they decide to build

an idol for themselves.

Now, the word idolatry, we have not, we usually don't use it

outside the Christian circle.

Idol, an idol was what ancient people made

in order to worship the image of their pagan gods.

And they did so because idolatry in the end was about

control.

See, they believed that the pagan gods had a lot of power, but one thing they

couldn't do is they couldn't feed themselves.

So they would make a statue representing their pagan gods and they would offer foods to them.

And after they offered up the foods, they would expect in return blessings such as

rain, good harvest, fertility, more babies, right?

That's what the pagan gods and idolatry looked like.

It was about control.

It was about I give something to you, you give something back, you owe

me.

And this was a problem for Israel because Israel worshiped one

true God who created all things and was all powerful and holy.

This God could not be controlled.

You could not make an image of him and try to worship it because he

was the invisible God.

He could not be contained in a statue.

He could not be fully represented by any artwork of a human being.

God did not and could not be manipulated by

mere creation humans.

And now many people are thinking, well, I don't know the last time I bowed down to a statue or made a statue myself.

Of course, there are cultures that still do bow down to statues and they do bow down to images.

I know this culture happens to not be it.

However, idols do not have to be a physical image.

An idol is anything that takes your worship

away from the one God who truly deserves your worship.

An idol can be your dream.

You would give anything, offer of anything to accomplish that dream.

An idol can be a relationship.

That person's opinion of me matters so much, I cannot fall asleep.

That's an idolatrous relationship.

An idol can be substance.

What psychologists would normally call addiction, that's idolatry.

Unfortunately, they cannot really help with substance abuse.

They only help them focus on other idols.

For example, if someone is an alcoholic,.

There is a program for that.

The success rate is extremely low, but when people do quit the alcohol,

they jump to another idol called caffeine or nicotine, whatever you

fill in the blank.

But the point is people go to idols to

worship it, to give their all in order to get something back from them.

It's a complete manipulation.

And idolatry is a huge problem, even among the people of God, because we're not

completely immune from having idolatrous relationships.

We're not completely immune from having even idolatrous relationship with substances.

Activities, dreams, goals, money, wealth,

control, those are all potential

idols that linger around in the church.

So, the main point, the question, the main question this text asks this morning is

what happens when God's people committed idolatry?

What happens when God's people commit idolatry?

One idolatrous leader can lead many into idolatry.

The first point is that one idolatrous leader can lead many into idolatry.

Now, from chapter 25 to 31, all of the instructions of the construction of the tent of meeting,

the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God concluded.

Now, God instructed Moses for 40 days up on the mountain, the Mount Sinai.

And upon the end of the instruction, verse 18 of chapter 31, the

Lord gives Moses two stone tablets with his 10 commandments

written by God himself.

It was a symbol of their covenant relationship with the Lord.

Now, covenant relationship was a type of relationship where it was a treaty, it was an

agreement, a legally binding agreement between two parties where they would

stay loyal to each other.

And one covenant relationship that we still have today is the institution of marriage.

That's why they make vows, right?

But when one party is disloyal, unfaithful to the other

party the covenant is broken.

And when that covenant is broken, in the ancient times when

covenant was broken, death was expected for the one who broke the party.

Covenant relationship.

And this is why when there is a party that

causes divorce or breaks the covenant relationship, it

feels like death.

For the other party.

It feels like as if the spouse has died.

Because with a covenant, when it breaks, death

was expected.

And that's the context that we're reading today.

So chapter 32 shifts the focus to Israel response

during Moses' absence.

Verse one.

Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered

together to Aaron and said to him, come, make us gods that shall go before us.

For as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt,

we do not know what has become of him.

As Moses, the main intermediary between God and Israel

has been gone for 40 days, the mob confront the second in command,

Aaron, his older brother.

From their speech, it is clear they have made up their minds.

They are not waiting another day.

Moses is gone, so we need a new way to interact with the divine.

Who's gonna protect us?

We're in the wilderness.

We're weak.

We were just former slaves.

And where we're going, there are giants out there.

There are powerful armies out there.

Who's gonna go before us if Moses is not here?

And notice how they describe Moses.

This Moses.

This is a disrespectful way of speaking of Moses.

This fellow, that guy, that one dude.

He brought us out of Egypt, but he's gone.

Yeah, he helped us out, but he's abandoned us.

Aaron, you'd better find a replacement.

You better find a way to get the divine to work for us.

God works for us.

We don't work for God.

That's the mindset.

That's the seed of idolatry.

Now, what does Aaron do?

Does he admonish them for their faithlessness?

After all, it's only been 40 days.

They've experienced so much blessing and deliverance from the Egyptian army.

And a lack of food, lack of water.

God's only been gracious all up to this point.

Does Aaron lead God's people back to the path of righteousness as the second in command

was entrusted with?

No, he gives in with no protest.

Verses two to five show a disappointing turn of events.

In verse two, Aaron gathers the materials to build the idol.

Break off the golden earrings, which are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring

them to me.

The command here shows the urgency.

Break off.

Other translations might have, tear it off.

Under the pressure from the mob, Aaron folded.

He caved in.

To Aaron, the approval of others was more important than the

approval of the Lord, his God.

That's idolatry.

A statue didn't have to exist in order for idolatry to be practiced.

Aaron was idolizing the approval and affirmation of his own

fellow Israelites over the approval of God.

Verse three tells us that the people obeyed and took off their golden earrings.

Even though it says all the people, the adjective all often means all sorts and

every kind of people.

So, after all, in the later chapter, we will find that the Levites actually remained

faithful, right?

They remained faithful to the Lord.

They didn't worship.

So, all kinds of people means young or old, male or female,

anyone from each tribe, right?

All various sorts of people, they took part in the construction of

this golden calf.

They all participated in this national apostasy, the national

unfaithfulness to the Lord.

And verse four tells us that Aaron took their gold and fashioned a calf out of it.

Now, the question is, where did these former slaves get all the gold, right?

All these Israelites were former slaves.

They didn't have money.

They didn't have 401K.

They didn't have an IRA.

They were poor.

Remember, after Egypt was heavily judged by all sorts of signs, the

Lord gave His people favor in the eyes of the former slave masters,

and they were given their gold.

They just asked for it, and the Egyptians were so eager for them to leave so that they would be

stopped, the judgments would stop.

They just gave them all they asked for.

Just take it, just leave.

The irony is that God's people took what God has graciously given them

and used it precisely to betray Him.

And of course, this form of idolatry gets mentioned again in the latter prophets,

right?

And the accusation is, God was a faithful husband to you, and

He lavished you with all the goods, and you gave it away to cheat on Him.

You were an adulterer.

You were an adulteress, O Israel.

That's happening right now.

Idolatry is an adultery against the faithful, covenantal God.

Now, upon finishing this idol, Aaron exclaims, this is your God, O Israel, that

brought you out of the land of Egypt.

And the similar words will be echoed again when Jeroboam I, the king of Israel,

makes two golden calves for Israel so that God's people would not go back to worshiping the

Lord in Judah.

Now, what is so special about a calf?

Why not a lion, right?

In many ancient cultures, bulls were highly regarded as a symbol of leadership, as a

symbol of strength, and a symbol of fertility.

So, many pagan religions, they worshiped bulls directly,

or even they put their gods standing on the bull.

The bull was the pedestal for their gods, right?

This was their thought.

My God is so strong that He is carried by a bull.

He can tame a bull, and He can stand on it.

And here's some examples.

So, this is Baal worship.

Baal is a storm god of the Canaanite religion, and they worshiped Baal because he's the storm

god.

They needed rain.

They needed production of grains, right, through rain, through the

weather changes.

So, how do they depict him?

He's a strong, divine figure who stands on the bull, right?

And of course, the Canaanites had other gods.

So, here's another one.

This is a Hittite statue of Teshub, the storm god, another storm god, on a bull, right?

So, this was the idea.

A bull was excessively used,

excessively used, even, for pagan idolatry.

Now, it is hard to know what Aaron was thinking, but if he was influenced by the pagan nations around,

Aaron built the golden calf to carry the invisible god,.

Yahweh.

However, even in this sense, what Aaron did utterly broke the covenant, the

second commandment, and thus committed idolatry.

After all, nowhere do we find that the Lord is carried by bulls.

The Lord does not ride on bulls.

He's not like the pagan gods.

He rides on the cherubim.

He rides on the angels.

And by making this golden calf, not only that, Aaron has arbitrarily

limited God's presence to a specific physical location of his choice, as if the

Lord God is chained to that golden statue at all time.

So, at its core, the golden calf was about controlling the

divine.

He has to be present because the golden calf is here.

The Lord is fixed here, so we're gonna offer stuff to him so that we might get something back.

And the gods who delivered us have to be here because the golden statue is here, nowhere else.

However, the true God, one true God, will not be controlled that way.

The creator God will not be restricted by the idol created by filthy hands.

And verses five to six show the wicked worship service done before this fake gods.

Aaron's perversion reaches a new height when he takes what the Lord has

ordained for proper worship and incorporates into idol

worship.

He built an altar before the golden calf and assigns a feast day.

Remember, right after the Israelites were delivered from Egypt, God assigned the

feast days.

Now, Aaron's going to assign a feast day of his own.

He will decide how this fake God will be worshiped.

And in verse six, Israel offers burnt offerings and peace offerings to the idol.

Burnt offering was the offering to atone for sin, to be forgiven of the sins that they've committed.

The peace offerings was to enjoy fellowshiping with God, enjoy relationship with God.

Hence, they would eat together after as if they're having a nice communal feast.

But Aaron took those holy offerings and made

them do so with the idol that he's just created.

A total perversion in a span of days because their leader decided to

indulge the lust of the people.

A total perversion in the span of days because Aaron

idolized the approval of men.

And in the book of Judges, a similar story repeats.

After God has delivered Israelites from the Midianite oppression through Gideon,

the judge, Gideon starts collecting golden earrings and

causes the nation of Israel to another national apostasy,

national unfaithfulness toward God who saved them.

Even though Gideon was used mightily, he

fell and brought the whole nation with him.

He was a leader who led a delivered, a recently delivered

nation into idolatry.

And this is important today because all too often, we as Christians are easily led

astray by eloquent leaders and passionate preachers

because of their past record.

We're so easily excusing of their bad theology

or even toxic behaviors, right?

When there's a pastor who's preaching heresy, all too often people try to justify

him.

Well, but that's not what he was last year.

That's not what he said 10 years ago.

Oh, look at his book that he wrote five years ago.

That's not what he really meant, right?

We excuse that because we look at the past record to

justify the present idolatry.

And it's equally bad when we try to excuse their abuses,

spiritual abuses, pastors who cheat on their wives, pastors who

sexually abuse young kids.

We excuse them.

Well, but his ministry is so faithful.

Yeah, but is that always true?

Did that really happen?

He's preached so faithfully through this book.

However, church, we have to be alert.

The past record does not justify present idolatry even

for a pastor, even for me.

There's no human, there's no person who follows

Jesus Christ who can be excused after rejecting Christ

and worshiping something or someone else that is not acceptable among

God's people.

No human leader deserves unconditional trust.

Only God deserves unconditional trust.

The moment we give unconditional trust to a human leader, that's

a dangerous sign.

And that's the beginning of a major fall.

Second, God's wrath is turned away through God -focused intercession.

God's wrath is turned away through God -focused intercession.

In verse seven, the scene changes back to Mount Sinai where the Lord is with Moses.

And the Lord said to Moses, "'Go, get down, for your people whom you brought "'out of the land of Egypt

have corrupted themselves.

"'God's holy people have profaned themselves "'through idolatry.'".

Here, we have to note that all throughout the book of Exodus, the Lord called Israel,

my people.

Ever since they were enslaved in Egypt, the Lord called Israel, my people.

There was a relationship even before they were free.

That famous phrase from Exodus 5, "'Let my people go so that they may celebrate "'a feast

to me in the wilderness.'.

However, here, the Lord dissociates from them.

The Lord calls Israel, your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have

corrupted themselves.

This is shocking.

For Israel, their weakness did not drive the

Lord away from them.

Their enslaved status did not drive the Lord away from them.

However, when Israel drove themselves away from the Lord through

idolatry, the Lord did not want anything to do with them.

That's because idolatry is an adultery.

It's adultery.

And it breaks the covenant relationship.

And the Lord recounts to Moses what happened at the base of the mountain while Moses was receiving the

law.

As Israel has broken their covenant with the Lord, the Lord threatens

judgment against them in verses nine through 10.

I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff -necked people.

Stiff -necked people is a metaphor for animals who need to be yoked.

And if their neck is stiff, they can't really be yoked.

They can't be tamed.

And God is calling Israel a stiff -necked people because of their hard heart and

stubborn mindset that will not do what is right before the

Lord.

Verse 10, now therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I

may consume them and I will make of you a great nation.

Now, because Israel broke their covenant with the Lord, the Lord decides to do what is

just, punish the covenant breaker.

This is a matter of justice.

In the ancient days, if you break a covenant, death was expected.

That's why a covenant ceremony usually included death of an animal to show visually

what would become of you if you break this covenant.

Right, when God made a covenant with Abram in Genesis 15, God

himself walks through the dead animals cut in half which

symbolize may this be done to me if I do not

fulfill the end of my covenant relationship.

But astonishingly, Abraham himself does not have to go through that.

And that's grace.

God will fulfill his end of the covenant even if it means he has to die.

And we do see that on the cross.

God becomes a man so that he dies in

order to fulfill his end of the covenant with his people.

That sin which separates his people from him

may be dealt with once and for all by God Jesus taking on our

sin on the cross and facing the wrath that we deserved.

Now, knowing that for breaking the covenant, Israel

deserved wrath from God to completely destroy them.

And instead, the Lord will now make Moses into a great nation.

Now, how does Moses respond?

Thank you very much.

I've been waiting for this.

No, we see Moses' selfless response as he intercedes for Israel

as a prophet.

He's in a unique position to represent his people.

I'm not your prophet so I don't represent you.

But we'll find out who does.

Verses 11 to 13 unfold Moses' intercessory plea.

He starts out by mentioning God's past redemptive act.

Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of

Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

Lord, they are your people whom you have saved.

You have delivered them.

They have been unfaithful, but Lord, they are your people and you saved them.

You've redeemed them with your own power.

Israel belongs to you, Lord.

Moses, at first, brings up the past redemptive act.

While verse 11 looked back toward God's past action of deliverance,

verse 12 focuses on God's character.

As Moses poses a hypothetical scenario, if Israel indeed is destroyed,

why should the Egyptians speak and say, he brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountain,

and to consume them from the face of the earth?

It is true that Israel deserves to be wiped out.

There's no question about that.

They completely earned it themselves.

However, why give the pagans an opportunity to misrepresent your

character?

Remember, the Lord didn't bring out Israel to kill them off in the

wilderness.

That was not the primary purpose of delivering them from the enslavement in

Egypt.

The Lord's primary purpose of deliverance from the enslavement, the bondage,

is because he's merciful and gracious, because he loves his people.

The Lord brought Israel out because he is good, because of his goodness.

However, if the whole nation of Israel were to be wiped out in the wilderness, the Egyptians will

misrepresent the Lord and his purpose.

At the core of the plea, Moses' core concern is the correct portrayal of the

Lord.

Moses' concern is the Lord.

Finally, in verse 13, Moses pleads for mercy by focusing on God's faithfulness.

"'Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, "'to whom you swore by your own self

and said to them, "'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, "'and all this land that I have

spoken of, "'I give to your descendants, "'and they shall inherit it forever.'".

Moses knew all too well that the Lord has a perfect track record of faithfulness.

Whatever God says, he does.

And how could God fulfill his covenantal promise to the

patriarchs if the nation of Israel is wiped out right now?

How could they be like the stars that could not be numbered if they're wiped out except for Moses?

Moses' concern was the faithfulness of God.

And verse 14 shows the effect of Moses' intercession.

So, the Lord relented from the harm which he said he would do to his people.

Now, it is important to point out that the Lord does not change his mind after considering

Moses' superb arguments.

That would go against his omniscience.

As if those facts did not ever cross God's mind,

right?

Oh, I forgot about the promise that I made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right.

Egypt would view me as some horrible, evil God who sacrifices a

nation of people.

You're so right, Moses.

Thank you for enlightening me.

Now, that would make him like us, ignorant human beings.

However, in the Bible, oftentimes the author of the Bible

uses human traits to describe what God

does in order that we may understand the

incomprehensible God.

And we see this everywhere.

The hand of God was against me.

When we read that, a hand did not appear out from the heavens.

It started pressing on people, right?

The hand of God, of course, God is spirit.

He doesn't have a hand to oppress his people or other people.

It's a way to accommodate for humans to understand what God was doing.

God was involved in this as if my hand were involved in oppressing, pressing

something down.

And in the same way, when it says the verb to relent, it doesn't mean the same way that we relent.

Ah, I changed my mind.

I totally didn't see that.

It's to show that God listened to Moses' prayer.

It's to show that Moses' prayer was so

selfless and God -centered that he mercifully, graciously

relented.

It shows that your prayers are heard and listened to.

Intercessory prayers are powerful.

And of course, the 1 Samuel 15, 29 reminds us of this, that

God doesn't relent the way we do, right?

He doesn't change his mind the way humans do.

It says this, and also the strength of Israel, that's the Lord, will not lie nor relent,

for he is not a man that he should relent, right?

It's an accommodation so that people of God may understand what just happened.

Now, when Moses is interceding, why does Moses focus

on God rather than Israel?

And this is because if Moses had focused on Israelites, on the Israelites in his

intercession, Israel would have been utterly destroyed.

There was no good that they have done that the Lord would be persuaded in

keeping them.

So, what does Moses do?

He trusts in God's mercy.

He leans in God's faithfulness.

He looks towards God's goodness.

That's what Moses does.

And Moses is one of the earliest intercessors in the Bible.

Abraham was one of them in Genesis.

And Moses here, as the prophet for Israel, intercedes on behalf

of his people, to turn away God's wrath toward his

people.

And this is really important because God will raise up another intercessor, an intercessor who is

more humble than the humblest Moses, more selfless than the

selfless Moses.

And that's Jesus Christ himself, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

He came to earth not just to bear your sin, not just that you would

be justified, that you would be counted as righteous.

And that's great.

That is a doctrine that you can spend your lifetime meditating on and

still not grasp the love of God.

But there's more.

Jesus is an intercessor on your behalf.

He doesn't just earn your forgiveness.

He continually works so that you're intercessed.

He is intercessing for your sin because we continually sin even after we're delivered

from our sin.

And that's a great hope.

In fact, the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 7 .25, "'Therefore, Jesus is

also able to save to the uttermost "'those who come to God through him,

"'since he always lives to make intercession for them.'".

He doesn't save somewhat.

He doesn't save mostly.

He doesn't save just so that you can do the rest.

He saves to the uttermost.

There's no end.

He saves completely.

He saves comprehensively.

He saves in the most complete way possible.

And what does he do right now?

What does Jesus do as he reigns from his throne?

It says he always lives to make intercession for them.

After you place your trust in Christ for salvation of your life,

Jesus lives to intercede for you.

Do you ever feel hopeless when you look at your life?

How you have sinned once again, the same sin over and over again?

And you tell yourself, gee, I would not forgive myself if I were Jesus.

Or even worse, man, Jesus is just shaking his head at me in heaven

right now.

Oh, fine, I will forgive you this time again.

But that is portraying our image unto Jesus.

The Bible tells us he always lives to make intercession for them.

That's what he's living for.

That's what he looks forward to.

He is excited about bringing you back from your sin.

He is excited about standing up for you,

arguing on your behalf to say that.

To tell his father, he's been covered by my blood.

He's been cleansed.

He's been forgiven, oh, my father.

And the father is all too delighted to forgive at the request of his dear

son.

The father isn't this hard -hearted father who says, okay, I guess this time.

No, the father, the father sent his son so that his son would be

able to do this.

The father and the son work together so that you would be interceded for.

So that the umpteenth time you sin, you wouldn't fall directly to hell.

Because Christ lives to intercede for you.

We have a greater intercessor than Moses himself.

Third, idolaters must not be present among God's people.

After hearing about the national idolatry, Moses goes down from the mountain

with the two tablets.

And the focus of the two verses, 15 and 16, are the two tablets that Moses is

holding.

The tablets from the Lord God himself.

And verse 17 describes the audible idolatry

happening at the camp.

It is so loud that Joshua, his attendant, who was waiting for Moses, thinks it's a

cry of war.

He mistakes it for a war cry.

However, Moses clarifies what it is because he knows what's happening.

In verse 18, 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.

Israel is not forced to make the sound as if they were under attack.

They are clearly celebrating an idol worship.

And verses 19 through 20 detail Moses' immediate rapid -fire actions.

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, 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 the powder.

And he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it.

Moses did not wait to figure things out.

Moses did not wait for negotiations.

Moses did not just wait to figure out, let's pray about this.

Moses did what was right at the right time.

He eliminated the horrendous idol and made sure that idol could not

be remade by burning it, grounding it, and making them drink it.

They're not even gonna be able to get the gold out.

The material themselves were gone forever.

That's how furious Moses was, this righteous anger.

And after destroying the idol, Moses investigates what happened in verses 21 to 24 by

asking Aaron, his older brother, what did this people do to you that you have brought

so great a sin upon them?

The term great sin in the ancient culture is actually used for adultery.

So in Ugaritic law, the great sin

is a referent of adultery.

So they took it really seriously.

And in fact, in the Bible, in Genesis 20, verse nine, God shows up in

King Abimelech's dream after that king took away Sarah, thinking that

Sarah was not married to Abraham because Abraham lied and said, she's my sister.

Abimelech is indignant of this lie because Abraham brought the great

sin upon him and his kingdom.

What have you done to us?

How have I offended you that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin, right?

Great sin was adultery.

You made me almost commit adultery.

And in relationship with God, that's idolatry.

In the Bible, when God's covenant people forsake the Lord and worship other

gods, it is treated as adultery, unfaithfulness, a betrayal,

a covenant shattering treason, which we saw with the tablets breaking.

It was covenant breaking.

In verses 22 through 24 detail Aaron's depiction of the account.

First, Aaron places the blame only on the people.

Do not let the anger of my Lord become hot.

You know the people, that they are set on evil.

Hey, that's their mindset.

You know them, they're stubborn.

They're sinners.

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.

This is a sign of fake repentance.

False confession.

Aaron refuses to take responsibility by shifting the blame on someone else.

And then when he finally gets to his part of the act, which is the very last one, of course, right?

He grossly minimizes his involvement by lying.

Verse 24, and I said to them, whoever has any gold, let them break it off.

That's not what happened.

All the golden earrings on your wives, your sons and daughters.

It wasn't whoever.

So they gave it to me and I cast it into the fire and this calf came out.

I just put the gold in the fire and then by some miracle, this calf came out.

Maybe it was God.

However, God knows, Moses knows, and the readers know

that Aaron is not telling the truth.

After all, note how the chapter ends.

So the Lord plagued the people because of what they did with the calf, which Aaron made.

No one's fooled by Aaron's lie.

And Moses, the human author, and God, the divine author were not fooled by Aaron's fraud.

Although God will not wipe out the whole nation, the just God has to deal with the gross sin among

his people.

Verses 25 to 35 detail the two sets of judgment and in between them, however,

is Moses' secondary intercession for God's people.

At the center of God's judgments, there is mercy for his people.

We think of God as the only judgmental God, but in the Old

Testament, too, at the core of it, there's mercy.

God desires to show mercy.

God gives opportunities to show mercy to his people.

What doesn't change is that his people never deserve that, yet God gives it to them anyway.

First, for the first judgment, God uses his own faithful people to remove idolaters

among them.

Moses calls out the faithful remnant, the Levites, who rise up and then

Moses commands 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 neighbor.

This is a serious command from the Lord.

The Levites are commanded to only look at the fact of the matter,

to completely root out the remaining remnants of idolaters.

They must not be blinded by personal relationships,

and that is what justice is.

Justice does not consider personal relationships.

Justice considers facts and evidence.

Now, this command, however, is not to kill hundreds of thousands of Israelites because there are hundreds of

thousands of Israelites, but rather it's to carefully investigate any

remaining idolaters by going in and out of the entrance to entrance throughout the camp.

The command starts with killing the most intimate circle and it broadens out, brother,

friend, neighbor.

And among God's people, idolatry must be dealt with swiftly and completely lest it spreads

like a disease.

Idolatry must not be tolerated among God's people.

And that's always been often the case when idolatry is tolerated either in

Israel or in the church, it spreads.

It spreads like cancer.

It spreads like a plague.

And this first judgment too was a gracious act because

it would have saved more life if you rooted out earlier

before it spread.

In a similar sense, why someone might amputate one of the limbs

before the rotting spreads lest you lose more part of the body.

It's painful, but it's necessary.

And after dealing with the national emergency, Moses goes back to the Lord to

intercede once again.

And this time is for the atonement of sin.

The first time was so that the wrath would be turned away.

It would have been an immediate wrath against the whole nation of Israel.

But this time it's the atonement of sin.

You have committed a great sin.

So now I will go up to the Lord.

Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.

While the first intercession prevented the immediate wrath, the outpouring of God's

wrath, the second intercession deals with the covering of their sin, the forgiveness of their

sin.

And just because they did not experience an extinction does not mean their sin was dealt with.

It just meant God was patient with them.

And Moses knew that the holy God will not associate with a sinful people.

And being abandoned by the Lord was just a slow execution in

itself.

After all, they would just die in the desert.

What chance do they have?

They're former slaves, surrounded by powerful nations who are pagans.

If God abandoned them, they're done.

And unlike Aaron's minimizing, blame -shifting, fake confession, Moses the prophet confesses

to the Lord on behalf of his people, honestly.

Oh, these people have committed a great sin and have made for themselves a God of gold.

At the core of their sin is the idolatry.

Yet now, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, I pray blot me out of your book which you have written.

Moses does not minimize their sin.

It was...

He doesn't say, give them a break at just one time.

It was just one statue.

It was just a couple thousand.

And he also does not detach himself.

Oh, well, I didn't do that.

I was with you, remember?

40 days.

That was Aaron.

No, he, in fact, counts himself among his people even after they have

rebelled.

Moses knows that if God does not keep his covenantal promise to

deliver his people completely into the promised land, then it's all over.

There's no meaning to his ministry.

Just kill me with them.

The Lord, however, shows grace to his people once again.

Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot him out of my book.

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.

What the Israelites wanted from the golden calf was some gods who would go before them.

What Israelites still got after the golden calf was God who

would still go before them.

His own angel he would send before them so that they would be completely

delivered into the promised land, as God has made a promise to in the past.

That's grace.

They did not earn this.

God gave them what Israel needed despite their unfaithfulness because of his gracious

character.

And another thing to note is that God will judge individually for sins committed against him.

God will not judge Moses for the sin of the rest of the Israelites, right?

Yes, the Old Testament is corporate.

It is more corporate in nature.

So, a nation got judged when a king sinned.

That's true.

But God will individually sort that out.

God will individually visit them for punishment.

And he can do that because he's omniscient.

I don't see how I can do it, but I'm not God.

And the fact that God will not abandon them even though his people, many of his people have abandoned him,

that's grace.

He's the faithful husband.

Then, verse 35 shows the punishment that followed after the idolatry.

So, the Lord plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron made.

The plague hit them.

We don't know how many died or if any died, but the punishment had to be served.

That's justice.

When God deals with his people, justice and grace go together.

Justice and mercy meet.

And that's because God is both just and merciful.

For Christians, we have no reason to fear judgement

because justice and mercy met at the cross.

A lot of the times when Christians go through a hard time, they mistakenly think that they're being punished by God.

But what we have to remember, Christians, is that the full wrath has been

poured out on Christ on the cross already.

There's no leftover wrath for you.

It's been dealt with.

Your sin has been dealt with.

That's what we look forward to.

Unlike the Israelites, God won't plague you for your sin.

You might still suffer in our days for various reasons.

Some of them might be your fault.

Some of them might not be your fault at all.

But that's not from God as a punishment for your sin.

That's just the reality of living in a fallen, sinful world.

And God still uses that to shape us, to transform us to become more like Christ.

Because sometimes there are certain lessons that can't be learned without suffering.

But for Christians, there is never a doubt in our mind whether we're being punished

for the sin that we have done because it's been paid for by Christ.

Let us pray.

Father, we're thankful for all that You've done and that Jesus paid for it all and that

You hold nothing against us.

And thank You that we have an intercessor up there who intercedes for us forever.

We thank You that we are saved and adopted into Your family.

In Jesus' name, amen.