The Big Sin (Exodus 32:1-6)
Right after the people have been saved by God with mighty power, seen in the ten plagues and the parting of the sea; right after they have seen the awesome power of God, heard His voice and been overcome with the fear of His glory, they fall flat on their faces. This is the big sin of Israel. Fashioning an idol, right after they had heard God’s own word forbidding such a thing. It is incredible. It is unbelievable. That is until you think that they—just as we—are sinners and incapable of anything else.
This is the same sin that Israel (the Northern Kingdom) will commit centuries later and will be sent into exile just as God in His covenant warns. And there are three things that we need to see in this act of sin.
1. The people did not listen to God. In 20:19, they are too overcome with fear to hear God’s words. They ask Moses to listen to God and to pass His words along to them. So, it is Moses (and Joshua) up on the mountain for forty days receiving God’s instructions and not the people. This is a part of why the people were impatiently waiting at the bottom of the mountain, and partially why they ended up taking matters into their own hands. We need to—right from the start after salvation—listen to God’s words daily.
2. God’s purpose for Israel was to be His special, different, holy people. But they, left to their own devices, wanted to be like everyone else. They wanted tangible, symbolic gods. They wanted to worship something they could see. Something they could control. Something that they weren’t afraid of. Later on, Israel would reject God again in an effort to be like other nations, when they asked for a man to be king over them. In our salvation, we need to embrace being different from the world around us.
3. Aaron tries to soften the sin by claiming that they are worshiping a representation of YHWH. And, even though this is not really what the people seem to have done, the syncretism of idol worship and the worship of YHWH almost seems to have been worse even than an outright abandonment of YHWH for paganism. Yet we too, too often do the same thing. Look at Christianity everywhere it is found in the world. Even—especially—in the West. We make God in our own image, tie His worship into political, social, stylistic ideas that appeal to us rather than Scripture.
This is the same sin that Israel (the Northern Kingdom) will commit centuries later and will be sent into exile just as God in His covenant warns. And there are three things that we need to see in this act of sin.
1. The people did not listen to God. In 20:19, they are too overcome with fear to hear God’s words. They ask Moses to listen to God and to pass His words along to them. So, it is Moses (and Joshua) up on the mountain for forty days receiving God’s instructions and not the people. This is a part of why the people were impatiently waiting at the bottom of the mountain, and partially why they ended up taking matters into their own hands. We need to—right from the start after salvation—listen to God’s words daily.
2. God’s purpose for Israel was to be His special, different, holy people. But they, left to their own devices, wanted to be like everyone else. They wanted tangible, symbolic gods. They wanted to worship something they could see. Something they could control. Something that they weren’t afraid of. Later on, Israel would reject God again in an effort to be like other nations, when they asked for a man to be king over them. In our salvation, we need to embrace being different from the world around us.
3. Aaron tries to soften the sin by claiming that they are worshiping a representation of YHWH. And, even though this is not really what the people seem to have done, the syncretism of idol worship and the worship of YHWH almost seems to have been worse even than an outright abandonment of YHWH for paganism. Yet we too, too often do the same thing. Look at Christianity everywhere it is found in the world. Even—especially—in the West. We make God in our own image, tie His worship into political, social, stylistic ideas that appeal to us rather than Scripture.
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