[Exodus 32] The People Choose the Golden Calf. In this chapter, Moses delays returning from Sinai, and the people fall into sin, worshipping a golden calf to take them back to Egypt. For us, this is an example of what idolatry is in a modern sense and a warning to stand fast in times of doubt lest we incur difficulty in our lives unnecessarily.
[Exo 32:1-35 KJV] 1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for [as for] this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which [are] in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring [them] unto me. 3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which [were] in their ears, and brought [them] unto Aaron. 4 And he received [them] at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These [be] thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 5 And when Aaron saw [it], he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow [is] a feast to the LORD. 6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. 7 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted [themselves]: 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These [be] thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it [is] a stiffnecked people: 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. 11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? 12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit [it] for ever. 14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. 15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony [were] in his hand: the tables [were] written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other [were] they written. 16 And the tables [were] the work of God, and the writing [was] the writing of God, graven upon the tables. 17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, [There is] a noise of war in the camp. 18 And he said, [It is] not the voice of [them that] shout for mastery, neither [is it] the voice of [them that] cry for being overcome: [but] the noise of [them that] sing do I hear. 19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. 20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt [it] in the fire, and ground [it] to powder, and strawed [it] upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink [of it]. 21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them? 22 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they [are set] on mischief. 23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for [as for] this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 24 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break [it] off. So they gave [it] me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf. 25 And when Moses saw that the people [were] naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto [their] shame among their enemies:) 26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who [is] on the LORD’S side? [let him come] unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. 27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, [and] go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. 28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. 29 For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the LORD, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day. 30 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin. 31 And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. 32 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin–; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. 33 And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book. 34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto [the place] of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. 35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.
In the previous chapter, Moses receives instructions on the fabrication of the Tabernacle in the wilderness and those appointed to do the work. Moses’ absence from the camp to spend time with God on the top of Sinai has stretched on now for 40 days, and the people below in the camp now falter as they are prone to do. Such things happen in our day as well. When leaders seem afar off, or we question where God is in our situation they often stray and become unfaithful. Paul understood this in his day and admonished the people not to be so dependent on leadership that they couldn’t stand on their own.
[1Co 16:13 KJV] 13 Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.
[1Th 3:8 KJV] 8 For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord.
Since Moses hasn’t returned from Sinai, the people choose Aaron as their leader and ask him to come up with a plan more to their liking. This often happens today. One man made a statement to me even as a young convert “You’re my pastor as long as you tell me what I want to hear…” What a devastating indictment of the church to have one so young in the Lord to be taught such a capricious attitude toward leadership. Paul lamented this kind of sectarian thinking and chastised the Corinthians for it:
[1Co 3:4-9 KJV] 4 For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I [am] of Apollos; are ye not carnal? 5 Who then is Paul, and who [is] Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? 6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. 7 So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. 8 Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. 9 For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, [ye are] God’s building.
The people have gathered to Aaron, and what are they asking for? They say to him, “up make us gods…” What is happening? They want something more to their taste, more relevant to their perceived needs. Aaron fashions for them a golden calf for them and, in so doing, condemns the people of God to centuries of idol worship for even after the days of Solomon decades later the people are still found worshipping the calf that Aaron conceived to make. What about the day we live in? Are Christians to be warned as the children of Israel were often warned against idol worship? Paul, addressing a Christian family, admonished them:
[1Jo 5:21 KJV] 21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.
Again when the early church deliberated the Gentile question, they felt the need to constrain new believers regarding what amounted to pagan practices:
[Act 15:29 KJV] 29 That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.
What is an idol? One writer likened modern ideas of idolatry not as metal images formed in the fire but as “mental images” that lead us to look to men for what we ought to look to God for. To be clear, Jesus taught in Luke 17:20,21 that the kingdom of God is within you. He likewise said if we are enticed by a message that says, “Lo, here, or “Lo, there,” is Christ that we are to “go not out.” What that tells us is that walking with God is an inward dependence on who Jesus is on the inside of us and that any outward dependency is idolatry.
In v. 2, Aaron collects the golden earrings of the people to forge into the god they are desiring. In other words, this speaks to leadership that gives the people what they want to hear and what they will support with their gold or offerings. Little has changed today. In the 90s, the idea adopted in leadership culture was that the church needed to be “user friendly” and “seeker-sensitive.” This is exactly the spirit in which Aaron is acting to give the people what they want and thus condemning them to their own destruction.
In v. 3-6, Aaron presents the people with the molten calf and announces a feast to be held the following day. The people get up early in the morning and enter into what will be described as a session of sexual abandonment involving the entirety of the company of two million people who followed Moses out of Egypt’s captivity.
In vs. 7-9, back on the Mountain of God, the Lord informs Moses what is going on with great displeasure in His heart. God’s patience is now taxed, and He offers to Moses to destroy this people and make of Moses’ family and heirs a mighty nation to inherit the promises that the people below have now showed themselves unworthy of (vs. 10-14). Here Moses fulfilled the type of Jesus as our Intercessor. He pleads with the Lord to refrain from destroying them lest the pagan nations mock the Exodus as merely God’s plan to wipe out the Israelites because Jehovah was incapable of bringing them into the land of Promise.
In v. 15-20, Moses returns and breaks up the festivities and demands Aaron to give an account of himself. Aaron feigns a lack of responsibility claiming that all he did was throw the earrings of the people into the fire, and the calf jumped out for them to worship. In anger, Moses breaks the tablets of the Law that were written with the finger of God and forces the conspirators to drink the powder of the idol that he grinds to dust before them.
What is the lesson for us today from this awful scene? Moses was an absentee leader, and the people became fearful, and in reacting to their fears, they defile themselves deeply. Idolatry, immorality and fear and close cousins. What was the connection between their anxiety and their decision to have a drunken orgy? In Psalms 19:9 David gives us an answer:
[Psa 19:9 KJV] 9 The fear of the LORD [is] clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD [are] true [and] righteous altogether.
The fear of the Lord is clean, but every other fear is unclean. Fear then is the underlying captivity where debauchery and immorality run rampant in a nation. Why is there so much contention regarding our nation’s leadership, and why is our nation so immersed in ungodliness? Letting the scripture discern the situation it is because of fear. Fear engenders immorality and uncleanness. When people fear, they look beyond themselves for answers because they feel weak and feel vulnerable. This is the opposite of the message of the Gospel that tells us that Christ in you is the hope of glory (Col. 1:26).
When people are afraid, they look to outward things for strength. This is idolatry. Again, remember idolatry is any other dependency than inward dependency upon who God is in your life. If you are placing your security on man or some situation, you will be disappointed every time. God is a jealous God, and what you allow to come between you and God – God will remove.
In vs. 21-25, Moses grills Aaron further about events that took place in his absence. Aaron relates to him the fabricated lie about how the calf came about. They threw the gold in, and the calf came out of the fire. What was the fire that Aaron was talking about? Remember that the mountain of God in front of them burned with holy fire. They threw the gold earrings in and allegedly out came the golden calf. A calf represents a young leader. There is someone always positioning themselves in the glory of God – taking credit to themselves in order to garner for themselves the honor that only belongs to God. By contrast Paul demonstrates in 2 Cor. 4:5-7 a different spirit:
[2Co 4:5-7 KJV] 5 For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to [give] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
In vs. 25-28, Moses turns to the Levites and orders them to arm themselves and commence to kill every idolater among the people. The Levites then were placed in a position to determine where their fidelities lay. I’ve often seen people more invested in a building or a church affiliation than in God himself or the anointing of God in their midst. I’ve seen people refuse to follow the anointing because of relationship considerations. In these moments, we need to be willing to put God first even if it costs us credibility among our peers.
In vs. 29-32, Moses goes up to Sinai again, to atone for the people. Moses went up to Mount Sinai to atone, but Jesus went up to Mount Calvary to atone. Jesus went up to atone for us. He became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. Moses prays a great intercessory prayer asking God if forgiveness was not possible for the people that his own name be blotted out of the book of Life. The Lord refuses to hear Moses’ prayer because Moses was a sinful man and could only pay the penalty for his own sin and not someone else’s. Thus, God basically tells Moses to mind his own business, and as a result, a plague breaks out among the people, causing further loss of life among those who survived the Levites’ attack by Moses’ command. We see here that under the Law, there is no reprieve, but in Christ, Jesus takes our punishment that we might live.
Thus we see that the people desire to move on from this situation – but there was still a price to be paid. Do you think that everyone in Israel participated in this idolatry? We know that Caleb did not. Yet, Caleb had to endure what was happening in his nation, because the nation had sinned and he as a righteous man was exposed to the consequences of that national transgression. Sometimes we suffer not for our own sin but for the sins of the people we have connected ourselves with. Better to be in the wilderness with God than in the midst of a disobedient people who are in a season of reaping the consequences for their actions.
