2So Aaron said, "Tell your wives and sons and daughters to take off their gold earrings, and then bring them to me."
3All the people obeyed Aaron and brought him their gold earrings. 4Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded and tooled it into the shape of a calf. The people exclaimed, "O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of Egypt!"
5When Aaron saw how excited the people were about it, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD!"
6So the people got up early the next morning to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings. After this, they celebrated with feasting and drinking, and indulged themselves in pagan revelry.
7Then the LORD told Moses, "Quick! Go down the mountain! The people you brought from Egypt have defiled themselves. 8They have already turned from the way I commanded them to live. They have made an idol shaped like a calf, and they have worshiped and sacrificed to it. They are saying, `These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.' "
9Then the LORD said, "I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are. 10Now leave me alone so my anger can blaze against them and destroy them all. Then I will make you, Moses, into a great nation instead of them."
11But Moses pleaded with the LORD his God not to do it. "O LORD!" he exclaimed. "Why are you so angry with your own people whom you brought from the land of Egypt with such great power and mighty acts? 12The Egyptians will say, `God tricked them into coming to the mountains so he could kill them and wipe them from the face of the earth.' Turn away from your fierce anger. Change your mind about this terrible disaster you are planning against your people! 13Remember your covenant with your servants--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You swore by your own self, `I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven. Yes, I will give them all of this land that I have promised to your descendants, and they will possess it forever.' "
14So the LORD withdrew his threat and didn't bring against his people the disaster he had threatened.
Points of Interest:
· ‘When Moses failed to come back down’—as was mentioned yesterday, Moses has been up on the mountain with God for 40 days, receiving more detailed instructions from him on how to live a life that takes full advantage of his blessings.
· ‘the people went to Aaron’—Moses had instructed them to go to Aaron if they needed any guidance while he was gone. Aaron doesn’t lead them exactly in the direction Moses would have expected. In fact, rather than leading the people according to the covenant that they all just heard and agreed to, he allows them to lead him away from it.
· ‘make us some gods’—it’s only been 40 days since they were in awe at the vision of God they had received, and as far as we know the cloud of God is still lingering on the mountain, but somehow the people have grown tired of worshipping him. They would rather follow an idol than this very real, awesome God. It’s easy for us to wonder what they were thinking, since worshipping actual idols is somewhat rare in our society, but the impulses that drive idolatry are very much still present today. Basically, they got tired of waiting for God; so they decided to make their own gods for more immediate gratification and for the security of knowing that their gods would be where they wanted them, when they wanted them. Then they said to these golden objects, ‘Lead us.’ It’s tempting for us to do the same thing. When following God feels scary, uncertain, or unpalatable, we turn to something else that’s safer, more immediate, and easier to control, and we ask that thing to lead us. It could be money, TV, food, education, or any number of other quick fixes that we turn to.
· ‘this man Moses’—not so long ago, they asked Moses to be their leader, passing along to them the words of God. Now, they are pretending that they don’t know him.
· ‘We don't know what has happened to him’—it’s possible that they are worried he has died or abandoned them, but this sounds a little suspicious. They all saw him climb into the cloud. Interestingly, as I mentioned in our discussion of Passover, the hero’s quest always involves the real or apparent death of the hero at the climax of the story. Of course, this is a dark moment in the story, when all seems like it may be lost. Well, we certainly have a dark moment here, and it’s connected to some speculation about the death of the hero. Perhaps the Israelite plan to make idols is their way of coping with the apparent failure of Moses’ quest. Moses was supposed to receive the law, and come back down to lead them to the promised land. Since Moses is not coming back, they look for some other way to move forward.
· ‘their gold earrings’—these earrings are part of the treasure that the Egyptians gave them to convince them to leave Egypt. They take the gift God sent them out of Egypt with, and they make an idol of it instead.
· ‘these are the gods who brought you out of Egypt’—40 days after they promised to follow all of God’s instructions, they break commandments number one and two, worshipping other gods and making idols. A case can be made that Aaron also takes the LORD’s name in vain by using it to declare a religious festival for the idols. If only Aaron made the idol on the Sabbath, he would have gone four for four in breaking the commandments having to do with God.
· ‘there will be a festival to the LORD’—perhaps Aaron is trying to do some PR spin here. Clearly they are worshipping an idol here, but he wants to clean it up a little by calling it a festival to the LORD.
· ‘Quick! Go down the mountain!’—as we might have guessed, Moses is not dead or missing. As we will find out in our next passage, he has indeed succeeded in getting the instructions from God he went up to the mountain to find. This is the moment in the story when the chase scene comes: will the hero be able to return to the people with the special equipment he has gained before it is too late? That’s a real question here. Even the LORD says to Moses, ‘Hurry!’
· ‘Then I will make you, Moses, into a great nation instead of them’—God makes the astounding suggestion that he and Moses do a ‘do over.’ Like crumpling up a sketch that doesn’t look like you had envisioned, or pressing ‘start’ on a video game, God wants to start from scratch in building a people who will follow him. He seems to be wondering if these people are just too far off from what they need to be: starting over might be easier, or even the only way.
· ‘The Egyptians will say’—Moses reminds God that the world is watching what is happening here. The LORD’s aim was to prove to the Egyptians and to the rest of the world that he was a God both willing and able to save his people. His reputation is on the line. If he destroys the Israelites, he will make exactly the wrong statement as to what kind of God he is. Even though the Israelites probably deserve punishment—and perhaps even destruction would not be unjust—God’s faithfulness to his own nature requires that he hold back.
· ‘You swore by your own self’—Moses also reminds God of his promises. The people of Israel may have already broken their promises to God, but that does not mean that God should abandon his promises to them, or to their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is God’s chance to show just how trustworthy his words are: even this monumental failure on the part of the Israelites should not get in the way of God fulfilling his promises.
· ‘So the LORD withdrew his threat’—Moses’ prayers and arguments apparently change God’s mind. Moses is so trusted by God and knows God’s character, plans, and words so well that he can speak almost at a peer level with God in this prayer, and persuade God to change his course of action.
Taking it home:
· For you: Ask the Holy Spirit to increase your boldness and power in prayer. May we all become people who pray like Moses, in full knowledge of God’s character and purposes boldly asking God to do what will most display his power and goodness.
· For your six: Pray that your six would have the patience to wait for God to come through for them. Pray that they would have the strength to resist the temptation to turn to cheap substitutes and quick solutions to meet their deepest needs.
· For our church: The people take the gifts God gave them, and they twist them into something to worship instead of God. God has given us as a church many wonderful things: huge dreams, good ideas for ministry, great programs, a wonderful new building, and much more. Pray that God would protect us from ever turning from a dependence on him to a dependence on those things.
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