Sermon Notes: Exodus 32:1-6 (Eric Croft)
Exodus 32:1-6
Good morning Three Rivers Church. My name is Eric Croft and I am glad that you have chosen to worship with us this morning.
Turn in your Bibles to Exodus 32 and this morning we are going to look at the first 6 verses together.
If you are visiting with us this morning, we are chugging along through the book of Exodus.
If you would like to follow along with my notes, they are available at theologyinthedirt.com, or you can go back and use them as a guide for RL groups later on.
Last week we studied a refreshing passage that reminded us of Sabbath, and how Sabbath rest continually points us to Christ.
The book of Exodus has demonstrated to us the power of God, His sovereignty in salvation, His holiness, and His commitment to bring His people to freedom from Egypt.
He spoke to Moses from the burning bush.
He preserved Moses’ life when Pharaoh attempted to eradicate God’s people through mass murder of His covenant people.
God demonstrated His power and authority over the gods of Egypt when He assaulted each one of them, which led to Israel's ultimate freedom.
God fed the people of Israel in the wilderness though they grumbled and complained against Moses.
God demonstrated His power over creation at Mount Sinai as He made the sky thunder and lightning, and caused the mountain to be covered with a thick cloud so that He could come down and speak with Moses.
He gave them His law and taught His people that human flourishing comes through obedience to His word.
He gave them instructions for constructing the tabernacle to worship Him.
He gave them priests to act on behalf of the people so that they would be accepted and forgiven for their sins.
He filled men with the Spirit of God, ability, intelligence, knowledge, and craftsmanship to carry out the work He commanded them.
It is impossible to read Exodus and not see the goodness and faithfulness of God to His chosen people.
We would assume then that God’s people would be completely devoted to Him for all the marvelous things He has done for them.
However, this week we are reminded of the truth that although God’s people belong to Him, sin remains an enemy that must be conquered.
The depravity of man is real.
Man's natural tendency is to drift away from God rather than pursue after Him.
Sin is constantly lurking around seeking out those who it may destroy.
It wants to be your master and enslave you.
When our first parents rebelled against God, sin was introduced into the world that caused all sorts of destruction.
One of the many ways sin is manifested in our lives, is the desire to be our own god.
To be the one calling the shots in our lives.
We see that at the fall where Adam and Eve sought autonomy apart from God’s good purpose for them.
The Tower of Babel where the people sought to make a name for themselves outside of God’s plan for humanity to cover the earth.
Abraham who sought to obtain a son through other means by which God did not intend.
Today’s text reminds us of how critical it is to ensure our focus of worship is centered on God, and the damage occurred when we are ever so slightly off course.
The worship of God has been defiled in Israel.
Sin has crept in the camp of Israel as they await the return of Moses.
Remember where Moses is at.
Exodus 24:18 says, “Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.”
Moses is having this mountain top experience where he is receiving instruction from the Lord while the people back at camp begin to grumble, complain, and get impatient with his return.
**Let’s read the text**
What do we see?
Observation #1 found in verse 1: The people of God willfully violate and transgress God’s clear command to not worship any other gods by commanding Aaron to “make us gods who shall go before us.”
In a moment of impatience waiting on the return of Moses, the people commit an atrocious sin that violates God’s clear instructions to worship Him alone.
The people knew where Moses had gone.
They have a history of grumbling and complaining and that is where they begin to go wrong.
Discontinuement is a root for all kinds of sins.
If God’s enemy can sow a seed of discontentment in your life then he can begin to control your thoughts, emotions, and physical responses.
The people were aware of God’s command to not worship any other gods before Him.
Remember the 10 words that God gave to Moses in Exodus 20.
The first command given was:
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
The people were not uniformed of what God called them to do.
Sin is hardly ever committed from a lack of knowledge.
The people were fully aware of what God had commanded them.
In Exodus 24:3, “Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.”
And in verse 7 again they make the declaration, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”
The reality though is that they would not obey.
God’s people have sinned against Him.
I understand that statement alone does not carry the weight that it should, but I am convinced it is because we do not think about sin biblically.
A passage like this deserves some time spent discussing the doctrine of sin.
Why is that?
Our society strives to minimize sin.
I found this quite amazing as I was reading up on the doctrine of sin.
John MacArthur said, “Of the Bible’s sixty-six books and 1,189 chapters, only two books and four chapters do not mention sin or sinners. Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22 stand alone as unique chapters that rehearse the creation before sin and the new heaven and new earth, which will never be infected by sin. The rest of the Bible, from Genesis 3:1 to Revelation 20:15, abounds with the themes of human sin and the need for salvation. Sin is a major doctrine.”
We consider ourselves to be good people.
Paul says in Romans 3:11-12, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.
We don’t talk about sin.
Sin is uncomfortable to talk about.
We laugh at sin as though it were something to joke around with.
We minimize its impact on us and the impact on others.
We celebrate sin. (If you're happy then that is all that matters!)
We tolerate sin in ourselves and in others.
We consider our sin to not be so bad as others.
We notice the log that is in someone else’s eye, but refuse to see the speck that is in our own.
We redefine sin by our own standards and not by what God has clearly defined in His Word.
We think of sin in terms of sexual immorality, murder, lying, stealing, cheating, addiction, and I could go on and on with a list of the sins we may categorize as obvious sins.
Listen to how John Piper defines sin:
“What is sin? The glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. And The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved. That is sin.”
Sin is not just what you do. It is far more than that. It is at the core root of who you are apart from Christ.
You are by nature an enemy of God.
You can not please God.
Your life and your actions offend a holy and righteous God.
Romans 8:8, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
From Paul David Tripp:
“Transgression is another explanatory word for sin. To transgress is to knowingly and willingly cross boundaries that an authority has set.
When we transgress, we trespass into a place God never designed for us to go.
The word transgression points us to the high-handed rebellion of sin. Sin is a rejection of God’s authority and his law, setting yourself up as your authority and writing your own laws.
Transgression is choosing to disobey God because there is something more important to me than loving, serving, and obeying God.
What this means is that sin is much more than breaking an abstract set of regulations that has been passed down to us from God.
Sin is a breaking of relationship with God that then leads us to break his commands.
Sin is a relational transgression that always produces a moral transgression.
The Bible speaks of transgression not just as a rebellion against a moral code, but as a rebellion against God himself.
One way the Bible helps us understand the seriousness of our rebellion is to characterize it as spiritual adultery.
Read Jeremiah 3:6-10.
This passage is raw and hard to read. Every sin is an act of vertical unfaithfulness.
Sin is adultery at the most profound heart level.
Sin is all about forsaking our allegiance to God and offering the deepest allegiance of our hearts to other lovers.”
This is what Israel has done in asking for gods to go before them.
Where does sin come from?
Sin always originates in the heart.
Long before sin is manifested by an outward expression it begins growing deep within the heart.
Let’s consider what Stephen said in Acts 7.
In Acts 6, Stephen is seized and false witnesses are accusing him of speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God.
During his speech, Stephen recounts the history of Israel beginning with Abraham and God making His covenant promise with him.
During his speech, Stephen refers to the Israelites worship of the golden calf, and in Acts 7:39 he said, “Our father refused to obey him (Moses), but thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt.”
Sin is always an issue with the heart.
Listen to what the Bible says about the heart.
The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Gen. 6:5)
Who can say, “I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”? (Prov. 20:9)
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matt. 5:28)
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. (Matt. 15:18-19)
For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble brush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:43-45).
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” (James 1:13-15)
Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
The deep rooted issue for Israel was an idolatrous heart that sought to worship God in their own way, but ended up with the false worship of a god who could not even speak.
Observation #2 verses 2-4: The people violate the second commandment which stated, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
David tells us in Psalm 106:19-21 what the people of Israel did in doing so.
“They made a calf in Horeb and worshiped a metal image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt…”
Psalm 106:19-21 is the exposition of this passage.
This is an excellent example of how the Bible interprets the Bible.
Israel replaced God’s glory with a man-made image.
The special relationship that Yahweh shared with Israel served as a testimony to the other nations.
However, the sin of idolatry is cited in this Psalm as the single most significant breach of covenant fidelity.
Verse 2, “Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, you sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.”
It is incredibly difficult to read this verse.
Where was the gold from?
It was from Egypt that God graciously gave to them as they plundered the Egyptians on their way out of slavery, and now here they are using the gifts that God gave them to create a false god to worship.
The plurals “these” and “gods” may mean that the people considered the calf to be another god equal to the Lord.
The people revert back to a polytheistic worldview they learned in Egypt and attempt to add another god to their worship.
They even attribute these gods as being responsible for bringing them out of Egypt! (V.4)
This is how sin works.
It corrupts our thinking.
It distorts our understanding of God and how we are to worship Him.
We twist the Scriptures and form a god of our own understanding to worship.
Their hearts' affections were turned from the One true God, to the worship of a man made object.
They distorted God’s Word and sought to worship Him on their own terms.
R.C. Sproul comments: “The cow gave no law and demanded no obedience. It had no wrath or justice or holiness to be feared. It was deaf, dumb, and impotent. But at least it could not intrude on their fun and call them to judgment. This was a religion designed by men, practiced by men, and ultimately useless for men.”
This is what happens when we exchange the worship of who God is, for the worship of our own imagination.
We end up with a god who fits our agenda but has no real authority and leaves us empty.
Next, they forgot God and all the wonderful saving acts He performed before their very eyes.
What did God tell the people to do over and over when they left Egypt?
Remember!
Remember the faithfulness of God.
Remember that He saved you from the land of Egypt.
Remember that when you cried out for deliverance that He heard you and He remembered His covenant promise to Abraham, Issiac and Jacob.
Remembering God’s salvation and rescue from sin helps us to stay on the path of following Him.
Why would he tell them to constantly remember?
They were prone to forgetting and constantly in need of remembering the salvation that God had provided.
A similar scenario happened in 1 Kings 12:28 where Israel worshipped a golden cow that was set up by Jeroboam.
Israel constantly forgot their God who saved them, and we ought to heed the warning to not forget.
Israel's history would be marked by periods of ups and downs because of judgment that would come on them due to forgetting the faithfulness of God and going after other gods to worship.
Observation #3 verses 5-6: Sin leads to corruption in worship.
Verse 5, “When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.”
The same offering that was performed in 24:5 to confirm the covenant that God had made with His people, is the same offering they make to this golden calf they have created.
Verse 6, “And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”
The NIV says, “Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.”
Ryken, “The Hebrew word for “revelry” sometimes has sexual overtones (cf. Gen. 26:8; 39:14).
What the Israelites were doing was indecent. Their idolatry led to immorality.
Their worship was vulgar and debauched.
It degenerated into a wanton orgy of lewd dancing.
They weren’t worshiping; they were partying. And it wasn’t for
God’s glory at all; it was just for their own sinful pleasure.
This is what happens when we do things our way rather than God’s way.”
Sin takes us further than we want to go, keeps us longer than we want to stay, and costs us more than we ever wanted to pay.
Sin leads to transgression, a willful rejection of God, distortion, and then corruption.
Application:
1) Sin is constantly seeking to draw your heart and your affections away from worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth.
God told Cain in Genesis 4:7, “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it.”
The same is true for you and I today.
Your greatest problem is not your spouse, children, employer, co-workers, politics, international wars, neighbors, sickness and disease,or even the government.
Your greatest enemy is sin and its desire to manipulate, control, and lead you away from worshiping the one true God of the universe.
Sin deceives you into thinking you are best friends.
Sin enslaves you to obey its commands.
Sin is darkness leading you to think it is light.
Because sin deceives and blinds each one of us, spiritual blindness will also be a reality we must strive to overcome.
First, the call is to repent and believe.
The Scripture is clear that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
We all have replaced God as the object of our worship.
The question is not if you worship, but what do you worship?
It’s not that we all have missed the mark, and that if we somehow try to do better we will eventually meet God’s holy and righteous standard of living.
That is trying to earn God’s favor through works and not by faith.
No, we all fall short of living up to God’s commands and can only be reconciled through faith and repentance in Jesus.
Israel needed Jesus to fulfill the Law and so do we.
Israel knew God’s Word and they still could not live in complete obedience to it.
We too are incapable of fulfilling the Law and therefore are in desperate need of Christ to fulfill it on our part.
This is the gospel.
Jesus did come and He did obey the Law fully.
He never sinned.
He never replaced the Father with any other worship.
Even when tempted by Satan, He overcame His deceptive lies and remained faithful to the Father.
For those who are in Christ, your sin no longer defines you as before.
Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
2) Be aware of the tendency to drift towards practical atheism.
Practical atheism is a disconnect between what a person says they believe, and their daily actions. How they speak, what they think about, what they watch when no one is around, what they truly worship with their lives.
This is essentially what the children of Israel did here.
They declared their fidelity to God, but then attempted to add another god to their worship.
God is a jealous God and He will not share His glory with anyone else.
They knew God’s Word, yet willfully ignored it.
The deceitfulness of sin wants to lure you into thinking that you do not need God, and that you are the ultimate decision maker for your life.
Practical atheism does not consider God’s Word to be the standard for daily living, thus leading to completely disregard God’s clear instructions much like Israel did when they disregarded God’s command to worship Him alone.
This leads to a rejection of objective Truth found in Scripture, and leads to an attempt to redefine truth on our own terms.
This is a slippery slope because when we do this it leads to the idea that we are self-reliant, capable of relying on our own wisdom, understanding, and rejecting anything that comes from the authoritative Word of Scripture.
This type of behavior is characteristic of many of the people you and I interact with daily.
We live in the South. Of course everyone believes in God, but very few people actually live everyday lives interacting with the God they say they believe in.
Do you desire personal holiness?
Do you spend time in the Word daily having your heart and mind renewed by the Scriptures?
Do you live in community with other people who will disciple you to be more like Jesus?
If we are not careful, practical atheism will lead us to spiritual apathy, moral decay, and drift off the path towards God and holiness.
Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 10 that Exodus 32:1-6 and the worship of the golden calf is given to us as a warning against idolatry and for our instruction.
1 Corinthians 10:6-8 and 11-14:
“Now these things became examples for us, so that we will not desire evil things as they did. Don’t become idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to play.” Let us not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in a single day 23,000 people fell dead… Now these things happened to them as examples, and they were written as a warning to us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So, whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall. No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
This does not mean that God will not lay on you more than you can bear.
That has no biblical roots.
Rather you have all you need to endure temptation and refrain from spiritual idolatry.
How do we accomplish this?
It cannot be done in isolation.
You have the Holy Spirit who is your counselor and instructor to lead you in paths of righteousness.
Know God’s word.
Study the manuel.
Wake up every day and make the commitment to remain faithful to the gospel.
Colossians 3:2, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
Keep your hand to the plow.
Live in community with others who will hold you accountable.
Hebrews 3:12,13, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13)
This is not a call for unbelievers to earn their salvation, but is the command for believers for sustained effort and diligence in holy living.
If we do these things, we will not fall away or worship anything else other than God.
Let’s worship!