Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Good morning everyone and welcome back to the second part of this Biblit!
I won’t mince words for too long, let’s just jump right back in.
If you missed the context portion of this Biblit, I suggest catching up with that first :)
Interpretation
For our interpretation, I am going to divide this passage into 4 main categories: The Fall, Prayer, Repentance, and Substitution.
That will make more sense as we go through them.
For the record, I got the main outline here from my exposition, it is incredibly helpful and I would highly suggest this series for any book study you do!
The Fall
I thought this was a very fitting title for what just happened.
If you recall, as we went through the Tabernacle rules from God, we made a lot of analogies to Eden and Creation.
Well, for those that read Genesis, you know what comes after Creation…the Fall.
And it is no different here.
The Israelites fell, and they fell hard.
I want to break down their sin into two main sins:
1. They did not trust God
Did you catch how this whole thing started?
Moses was on the mountain for 40 days, and I’m guessing this happened around days 39-40, but I can’t be sure.
The Israelites went up to Aaron, their spiritual leader, and told him they didn’t know what happened to Moses, so they wanted to make an idol representing God for them to worship.
First of all, they all knew the 10 commandments…they knew this was 100% against those commandments. Even if they truly thought the calf was a representation of God Himself, they should have known it was wrong.
This really comes from the fact that they didn’t know what was going on.
They didn’t trust God, they were tired of waiting, and they decided to take matters into their own hands.
And in doing so they broke the 10 commandments, minimized God’s grace by giving His precious gift (gold) to an idol, and took control of a situation instead of trusting God.
2. They did not worship rightly
The second thing they did wrong was with their worship.
I feel like in a strange way, they were actually very close to doing things right, but then they twisted it with their own evil desires.
I get it, they were scared. Moses was in this giant storm cloud on top of the mountain for over a month!
And honestly, the best course of action for them probably would have been to set up altars, make sacrifices, and worship the Lord.
But they were led by fear and took matters into their own hands, and 100% twisted the idea of worshipping God into an evil display of debauchery.
They crafted this golden calf to represent God and bowed down to worship it.
When they decided to worship creation over the Creator this did 2 big things:
They were morally corrupted: let’s read verses 6 and 7 together:
“Early the next morning they arose, offered burnt offerings, and presented fellowship offerings. The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to party. The Lord spoke to Moses: “Go down at once! For your people you brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly.” (Exodus 32:6-7 CSB).
Because of these verses, most theologians agree that the word “party” or also seen as “play” probably refers to sexually immoral activities.
So it’s not even a question. They clearly were not worshipping God. They were giving into their own evil desires and using the worship of this creation as an excuse for it all.
That is almost the worst thing about it all to me. They used worshipping God as an excuse for wickedness.Imitation game: at the end of the day, we all become what we worship. In this case, the Israelites worshipped a golden calf, and that is what they became.
David put it best in Psalm 115:
“Their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. They have hands but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throats. Those who make them are just like them, as are all who trust in them.” (Psalm 115:4-8 CSB).
Israel became stiff-necked, stubborn, and dirty just like a cow. And that’s how God viewed them, and He wanted to wipe them out.
Prayer
This leads us to our next point: the power of prayer.
There is a classic question that pops up from this passage: did Moses really change God’s mind?
If you read the passage it surely seems like God was set on wiping Israel out until Moses spoke up.
Those of us that lean heavily on God’s sovereignty have a hard time with this passage. Moses surely could not have changed the Almighty’s mind, right? God’s plans never change.
Yet the way it’s written, Moses seems to have definitely played a major role in interceding on Israel’s behalf and saving their lives because of it.
And I believe both of these scenarios are true! God’s plans never changed. But part of His plan was for Moses to get involved. God was challenging Moses to intercede for his people.
God did this elsewhere in the Bible too. He did this with Amos and He also did this with Jonah when He said He would destroy Ninevah in 40 days. Ninevah ended up not being destroyed because they all repented because Jonah got involved.
I think the takeaway here is that Moses got involved through prayer, and that was part of God’s plan. I think if Moses had not prayed, Israel would have died. And I think that is a true testament to the power of prayer.
Repentance
We could go on and on in this section about Aaron’s poor leadership, how he blamed Israel, and then blamed the fire for giving them the calf. We could also touch on Moses’s reaction of breaking the tablets and destroying the idol.
However, for sake of time I will sum those up: Aaron was a poor leader, and Moses was not acting sinfully, or else he would have been rebuked.
Cool?
Cool!
There is one thing I wanted to dive deeper into real quick, though.
Moses asked those who were still committed to him to come forward. He then asked them to take their swords and go kill 3,000 other people, the idolaters.
This can be awfully confusing so I wanted to talk for a brief moment about this.
First and foremost, after Christ came, we now live in the new covenant. The new covenant in Christ does not for any reason ever condone killing in order to preserve orthodoxy.
If someone disagrees with the church on a doctrine, you can’t take them out back and dispose of them.
Not anymore.
But in the case of Moses, if they had left the idolaters in the camp, then that was a major threat to the preservation of truth and salvation for future generations. If idolatry had continued it could have broken their trust in God completely and many would never have had the opportunity to obtain eternal life through Christ.
Lastly, I think it is very important to show that Moses asked for anyone still committed to coming to him. That was everyone’s opportunity to repent and receive forgiveness.
So the 3,000 that died did have multiple chances to come back to God, but they continued to dismiss Him.
Substitution
Last but not least, Moses’s noblest act: substitution.
When Moses went back to God after dealing with the idolaters, he still had to intercede for Israel. Many of the idolaters repented, but that didn’t mean they were cleared yet.
Moses still had to bring their case to God.
And what did Moses do?
He begged God to forgive them, and even offered up his own life to God in order to save them!
What a picture of Jesus, right!?
However, Moses was not perfect either. He was a sinner. That meant Moes could not die for the people. The only sacrifice God can accept is a perfect sacrifice, unstained by sin.
Despite this, God still agreed not to wipe out Israel, but He did say that all the sinners would be wiped out of His book for eternal life.
Tune in tomorrow to see how this passage applies to us today!