Exodus 32 - a few words

Exodus 32:1 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.”

2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 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, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Adoration of the Golden Calf - Nicolas Poussin, 1634.

The people of Israel had been delivered from slavery in Egypt. The events of Exodus 32 were not decades after the 10 plagues. The betrayal of Israel was perpetrated by the same people who saw the Red Sea part, who witnessed the thunder and lightning of God's holy presence descend on the mountain. This was the SAME generation who had just received salvation, deliverance, freedom from the house of bondage. 

The events of Exodus 32 took place at the foot of the mountain. They were within the very sight and presence of the same mountain upon which God was communicating his desires and instructions to Moses. Those who worshipped the images of the golden calf could not claim they had "forgotten" the Lord's deliverance due to passage of time, or due to being without present reminder. The people were within viewing distance of God's presence! 

The worship of the golden calf was not a worshipping of "another" god. Aaron upon creating the image of the Calf (32:4) attributes to this image the actions of the almighty "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." Aaron doubles down in this false worship and says that there will be a celebratory festival "to the Lord" (32:5). This generation didn't see it's worship as false, but rather thought it to be proper. 

This is a terrifying passage. This is a sobering passage. God's people had just witnessed the deliverance and mighty power of the Lord in overthrowing Pharaoh and securing freedom. God's people were at the foot of the mountain where God was. God's people had sent Moses up the mountain because they themselves were too scared to be in God's presence. And only after a few weeks, the people were willing to forgo all patience, all reason, all of their memories of deliverance, and attribute all this goodness they had received to some man-made art. 

"It is not by the obvious works of evil that Satan perverts the church, but by quiet displacement and unnoticed substitution." - E.M. Bounds

It was with this abominable substitution that the people of Israel sinned against their merciful and mighty deliverer. Like a married couple enjoying a honeymoon that only days before exchanged oaths of love, the ancient Israelites were like an adulterer in the hotel suite of another all while calling their new lover by the name of their new spouse!  

Sin is so tempting, and so easy! All it takes is not waiting. All it takes is replacing God with something else. You can even keep the same name but still be worshipping a false god. While the vast majority (I bet none of us) will not find themselves presented with the temptation to bow down before any statues this week, we will be tempted to neglect what God has said for our lives. We will be tempted to be impatient, rather than waiting on the Lord, to begin to take action and live religiously out of our own ideas and ideals. This sin is in it's foundations the same as the sin of the ancient Israelites before the golden calf. 

The Israelites were at the foot of the mountain where God's very presence passed by! The Israelites had just seen God's 10 plagues and great miraculous victory at the Red Sea. When temptation arises we must always strive against it! We must remember how near the Lord is to us, indeed for those of us in Christ it is his Holy Spirit which indwells us (1 Cor 3:16, 6:19, 2 Cor 6:16, 2 Tim 1:14, and Acts 6:5)! We must recall the mighty deeds and miraculous mercy of God to us in washing away our sin. We must strive, struggle, and put to the sword of the Spirit the sin which dares approach. 

“Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.” - Richard Baxter