Mark Twain was a man who became quite hostel towards the Bible and towards the Christian faith. He was so persistent in his attacks upon Christianity, that his wife, who was a devote Christian, became so discouraged, she eventually turned her back on Jesus Christ – something Mark Twain regretted later on in life. Although Mark Twain grew up in a Christian household and had a kind, loving and faithful mother, he saw many in the church who did not live truly repentant lives. Mark Twain witnessed elders and deacons who owned slaves and abused them. He saw men who were dishonest during the week, yet, pious and righteous on Sunday morning. He saw men and women, who claimed to be worshiping the one true God, but their lives bore no evidence of this claim. Mark Twain saw through their lie and he couldn’t stomach the hypocrisy; He turned away from the one thing that would have calmed the turmoil in his life based on the actions of some who claimed to follow Jesus Christ.
This is what we see in our Scripture passage this morning in chapter 32 of the book of Exodus. We see that the Hebrews continue to live the lie – even after they are stopped from worshiping the golden calf, even after the ten commandments are smashed, even after they are forced to drink water with the ground up golden calf in it. They are a people who are unrepentant, they don’t honestly see their sin for what it is, and they are determined to continue to live just as they always have lived. This is a disaster that will lead the whole community down the road to death – Moses knows that it must be stopped.
What the Hebrews do as the base of Mount Sinai is nothing new and it is something that we can fall into this very day; We can create an image in our minds of who God is, that has nothing to do with who He really is. The Hebrews created a golden image of a golden calf and then called it the real God, it is the god of their imagination and has no relation to the true God – but this is of no matter to them, they will ignore the revelation of the ten commandments and serve what they imagine who God is. They are more interested in who God is for them, than in who God is. They are more interesting in believing in a God that fits into their culture, than finding out who the real God is. The most insane thing about this whole story we have read today, is that even when the Hebrews are confronted with the facts, even when they are shown their fallacy….they continue to live out their fallacy.
Last week, we saw that Moses had been gone for several weeks, and the Hebrews, fearing that Moses would never come back, take matters into their own hands. They create a god out of gold, similar to what they would have experienced in Egypt, and they worshiped the god as the true God, Yahweh. Afterwards, they had a festival were they proceed to break the Ten Commandments just given to them. Needless to say this does not please God, and He sends Moses back down the mountain to stop the people in their sin.
We pick up here in verse 17. Joshua had gone with Moses part way up the mountain, and so he is not aware of what is going on in the Hebrew’s encampment. Joshua, who could never imagine the drastic turn of events, innocently thinks he hears the sound of war, perhaps the Amalekites are back. But Moses, he knows better. Ex. 32:18 Moses replied: “It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear.”
Looking at the Hebrew, a better translation that gives us a better sense of what Moses is saying is:
Not the sound of heroes exulting
Not the sound of losers lamenting
The sound of random singing is what I hear
Moses is literally speaking of the different kinds of singing. The first two lines speak of a call and responsive type singing, in contrast to people singing different songs, and different tunes. It is literally the singing of the strong, the singing of the weak, and singing that is random, wild, disorganized, haphazard – suggesting that the reveler’s wine is starting to work…if you know what I mean.
Moses arrives at the camp and sees the golden calf and the people dancing. The type of dancing the Hebrews were doing is connected to pagan cultic festivals and particularly to fertility contexts and was often sensual in nature….the type of dancing preformed at the adult men’s clubs here in town – certainly not something one would find in a church service dedicated to God. In Hebrew – this type of dancing means that they were running naked. Get the picture? This is the farthest thing possible from the worship of the Lord God – and so Moses explodes.
He throws down the Ten Commandments shattering them to pieces. Remember, last week we discovered that the Ten Commandments were most likely quite small, about the size of your blackberry or iphone. Many people over the years assume that Moses sins in his anger by breaking the Ten Commandments – but does it say that? No, there is no mention that Moses has done anything wrong. Be careful about reading into the text what is not there, many times when we read into the text, we distract ourselves from what we should be really paying attention to – and what we should really be paying attention to is the refusal to truly repent of sin and change the direction of our lives.
Moses becomes so angry because he knows what he will see will be bad, but when he actually lays eyes on the Hebrews and sees how bad it really is, he cannot believe his eyes. The breaking of the Ten Commandments in itself, shows how dramatically the people have broken the covenant with God so quickly and so strongly.
Here we must understand that Moses stops the people in their tracks and then proceeds to walk into their midst to destroy the golden calf and try to restore order. This is quite amazing, one man arrives and puts an end to all this craziness – Moses was a man of great courage.
Years ago I had the great privilege of performing a funeral for a man named Jim in northern Oklahoma. Jim was just your average man with a modest house, married with a dog and a couple of kids and was known as a very hard worker. He worked for the railroad on a crew laying and maintaining rails. Jim was a very strong and well built man.
In the early 1930’s the KKK came to town and organized many of the men in the town. One Saturday morning about 150 men dressed in the KKK garb of white sheets and white hoods gathered for a very public march though the town square. As they started to march Jim stepped out in front of the men and declared that this KKK march was over and that everyone was to go home. It was Jim alone standing up against 150.
The local grand wizard started a rant, loudly spitting out threats and vulgar language at our man Jim, and then ended his tirade asking what Jim was going to do about it. Jim stepped forward and decked the grand wizard square in the jaw, and the grand wizard was out before he even hit the ground. Jim turned toward the 149 and asked, “Who was next?”
After a few tense moments, the march was over and the KKK never dared to publicly gather again in that town. The courage of one man, overcame the sin of so many.
Moses then takes the golden calf, burns it and has it ground into dust. The golden calf may have been a wooden figure with gold overlay or Moses simply places the figure in the fire to show God’s contempt for their actions. Forcing the people to drink the dust of the golden calf should not be seen as a vindictive act or some sort of punishment. What Moses is doing is an ancient practice of total destruction. The destructive sequence - burn, scattered, consume used on an idol, is also found in Ugaritic tablets and is an indication of the total destruction of a deity. So this is a very old custom. (Remember, Ugaritic is very ancient cutiform writing found on clay tablets in the middle east). Here, Moses has the people drink the ground up gold not for punishment, but for total destruction of the golden calf. This gold cannot be used for any other purpose as it is desecrated. Moses assures that this false god will never come back.
And then, the amazing happens. Here we need to pay attention.
The people have been confronted, their false image is gone, never to return, and the denial begins, and in begins with Aaron. Verse 21 –24. Moses confronts his brother, how could you let this happen? Aaron attempts to divert the blame by putting it on the people. He minimizes his sin by inflating the sin of others. (verse 32) “You know how prone these people are to evil.” He minimizes his own sin and tolerates the sin of others by giving the classic boys will be boys argument. He is basically saying, in our modern day terms, “These people are genetically prone to do this, they can’t help it.”
Is Aaron sorry for what he did? Is Aaron repentant? No way, Aaron explains how it really isn’t as bad as it seems – “Moses, let’s just move on with life”.
When Aaron claims that he throws the gold into the fire and out comes a calf, this is more that a ridiculous lie. This is Aarons reference to spiritual powers beyond his control. Everyone knows that Aaron was the one who fashioned the calf. Aaron claims that he was somehow influenced by greater spiritual forces, in other words, it really isn’t all his doing.
Remember, in the ancient world the people who worshipped idols knew that the image wasn’t the god. They weren’t stupid. They knew the image of the god was, just wood, or stone or gold – but the believed that the god either inhabited the stone, wood or gold, or they believed that the image represented the god and if they worshiped the image, they were by extension, worshiping the god.
Here we see a claim that there was somehow, spiritual forces at work. Now let me ask you this: If those spiritual forces were NOT of the Lord God’s doing, then who were they? The bible is very clear throughout the Old and New Testament – there are no other gods. If people are serving spiritual forces, and those forces are not of God, and there are no other gods…..you put it together. No wonder God is so offended.
Aaron is a representation of the greater attitude of the people. Sure they stopped worshiping the golden calf. Sure they consumed the calf to insure its destruction – but there is no repentance, there is no attitude change…and there is no intention to change.
We today fool ourselves. There is sin in our lives and we may stop the sin, we may see to it that the sin is eliminated from our lives – but that is not the same as being repentant and turning away from our sin. We can eliminate a sin, we can stop the sin, but deep down we can still have no recognition of the wrong we committed or have any real repentance.
The Hebrews have now become exposed to the criticism of their enemies, those who rise up against the Hebrews. His means two things: First, they are a people who have received the revealed Word of God and so they are to be held up as different than any other nation. They are to be a holy people, a righteous people, but it is clear that they are just like everyone else. They are for all intents and purposes acting like the Canaanites they are on their way to dispossess. Second, because of the state that they have placed themselves in, with their reckless party, they are now vulnerable to destruction by their enemies.
This, this type of attitude opens us up to ridicule from unbelievers, like Mark Twain. When we imagine no serious wrong in our lives, we turn away people from the one true hope in their lives, we squander the privileged given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. We can place upon ourselves an image of righteousness, but by doing that we only make ourselves vulnerable, because as we live the lie, others see right through our sin.
Now at this point you would imagine that everything is back to order in the camp, but it is not – they go right back to what they were doing. Moses has intervened, stopped the worship of the idol, destroyed the idol by the ingestion of the people and still, Verse 25, the people are running wild – meaning they are running around naked, continuing to commit the loose sexual indulgences and everything that goes along with it. They continue to blatantly, openly, break the covenant of the Ten Commandments recently given to them. The Hebrews turn from drinking the water with the ground up golden calf, and go back to what they were doing when Moses arrived.
Incredible.
It is like they experience this cleansing, this chastisement, this correction and then they move on with their day. It was as if they appeased Moses, did what needed to be done, and went on with their beliefs. Why? Why are they doing this? They do not see any real problem with their sin - and if they cannot see the problem, they cannot get away from it.
So we see in Verse 26 the start of a harshly worded section of Scripture. Moses literally says, “Rally to me, all those who are Yahweh’s”. Moses means, “Who believes that the Lord God is the real God” when he asks this question. He is asking, “Will you stay with your imagined version of who God is, or will you stand by the revealed version of who God is?”
Then the sad news. Only the Levites come to Moses. One tribe out of twelve. What this means is everyone else refuses the revealed Ten Commandments by the voice of God – which they all heard at the foot of Mount Sinai, we saw that in Exodus chapter 20. They all chose to believe that the cultural version of God, is the real version of God. They all chose to believe that building the golden calf, and calling the image of the real God was culturally the right thing to do. They believe that all their actions that went directly against the Ten Commandments were culturally just fine. The direct evidence of this was their continued practice of these sins.
See, the cultural version of God allows the people of God to live like everyone else. It allows them to do things that God calls sin in the Ten Commandments, and not call it sin anymore. I can claim all kinds of circumstances, and reasons, and justifications for what I do. I can cite studies, real stories and anecdotal evidence; I can show that others are not harmed, I can build quite a case…When I do, I begin to create my version, my imaginary version of who God is, because what is more important to me is who God is for me – when how it should be is: Who God really is, for who God really is.
Moses shouts, “Come to me those who are Yahweh’s”, meaning that they are to come to God on His terms, not on their terms. We come to God on His terms. You and I may have beliefs influenced by our culture, and when the Scripture challenges those beliefs, we need to not be like the Hebrews.
Were the Levites all innocent? Exodus doesn’t say, but most likely not. What we see with the Levites is that they are people who have seen the real God and the cultural god – they choose the real God, popular or not.
Drastic measures are now taken. Moses asks the Levites, “Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” Moses is using a Hebrew colloquialism here, he is not asking to literally kill brother friend and neighbor, he is asking them to kill those who are continuing to act against the revealed word of God, even if they are a brother, a friend or a neighbor. There are about two million Hebrews, 3000 perish. There is a sense here that the worst offenders, the leaders of this rebellion are removed.
I admit this is quite harsh. Yet, this is what happened and we need to see that sin is a serious issue and that the Lord God is not a God that will turn a blind eye to it. We cannot say, “God wouldn’t allow this kind of thing to happen, surely this was added later to the text”. There is absolutely no textual evidence of the kind. None. It says what it says, it is what it is. Are we attempting to create a god of our expectations or do we want to see who God is?
It appears that this drastic measure was taken because even in the face of the facts, even in the face of the complete removal of their imaginary version of God. They continued to believe the lie. Know this: Sparing sinners is not the same as saving them.
Moses now attempts to step in for the people, but he cannot for Moses cannot atone for their sin. Moses asks to be a replacement. Moses, a good and righteous man asks to take on the sin of the people. If God will take retribution on only Moses, then, perhaps the people can be saved. But God refuses. See, only God can take on another’s sin, which is exactly what Jesus Christ comes to do.
Brothers and sister, let us understand how blessed we truly are, if we confess our sin, and turn from it, we are with out a doubt to be forgiven. In this we as Christians take great comfort and great hope.
But we also can be like the Hebrews and build an image of a god that allows us to remain in our sin. We can deceive ourselves, we can hear the truth, digest the golden veal – and go back to what we were doing.
Let us not build a imaginary god who fulfills our cultural expectations, let us diligently seek the true God, as revealed in Scripture. May the blessings and the wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon us as we seek to know our Lord. Amen.
