Sin Rises Up

Sermon Summary / Transcript

Let’s pray as we come to God’s word. Oh Lord, your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Your testimonies are our heritage forever, for they are the joy of our hearts. We incline our hearts to perform your statutes forever, even to the end. We ask, therefore, that you would turn to us and be gracious to us, as is your way for those who love your name. Keep steady our steps according to your promises, and let no iniquity gain dominion over us. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.

For the next several weeks, we’ll be working our way through the famous story of the Golden Calf its aftermath. This morning, we’ll look at Exodus 32:1-6:

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.” 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. Exodus 32:1-6

This past week, Jason and I were talking with our pastoral interns, and one of them asked a question: “How do you put a sermon together?” They’ve read books and talked about that before, but now they have to do it for the very first time. There’s a long answer and a short answer to that question, but here’s part of the short answer: when you work on a sermon, there are two key steps. The first step is to look for the exegetical point of the passage. Exegesis means “to bring out of the text what’s already there,” as opposed to eisegesis, which is “to read into the text what you want to be there.” So the first thing to do is study. You read, work in the original languages (if you can), and you pull out all that you can to try to establish what the exegetical main point is. “Why was this passage here in the Bible when the original hearers were hearing it or the original readers were reading it? What was God trying to communicate?”

Once you have that, the second step is to try to establish the homiletical point. Homiletics is “the study of preaching.” In other words, after “What was the point of this passage for the original audience?”, we ask “What’s the point that we want to land on our audience today?”

Sometimes, those two points will be identical. In Luke 18, Jesus told the people a parable, and Luke says “he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” That’s both the point of the story to Jesus’ listeners and the preaching point for anyone preaching on that parable: “Pray and don’t give up.”

Other times, there is a close relationship between them, but they aren’t exactly the same: “Here’s what the point was for the original audience, and here’s the point that I want to make in preaching this text to you.” That’s just to give you just a little insight into how preachers try to think about these packages.

I say all of that because I believe that, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the homiletical point of this passage has been given to us. The exegetical point, on one level, is to show us what happened in the intervening moments between when Moses received the instructions for the Tabernacle (Exodus 25-31) and when the construction of the Tabernacle begins (Exodus 35). That’s what is going on in the narrative.

But what’s the preaching point? I believe that the Apostle Paul gave that to us. Keep your finger in Exodus and turn to 1 Corinthians 10. Paul is issuing a warning to the Corinthians against idolatry. To do so, he draws from a number of different episodes in the life of Israel from the Pentateuch:

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 1 Corinthians 10:1-5

Paul is establishing that we have something to learn from these people in the Old Testament, because they’re like us. They looked to Christ, and we look to Christ. They were all together, and we are all together. So, what do we have to learn from them?

Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not 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. 1 Corinthians 10:6-13

Do you follow the argument that Paul is making? He’s relating the Corinthians (and by extension, us) to these people in the Old Testament. He’s saying, “Look, they were just like you. No temptation came upon them that doesn’t come upon you. The temptations that you face are the same sort of temptations that they faced. They did not escape that temptation, but God will provide you with a way to escape the temptations that you are facing.”

In particular, he draws attention (vv. 6-7) to the incident of the Golden Calf. There might be many purposes for the story, but here’s the one that both Paul and I want to draw your attention to: “Do not be idolaters as some of them were…” “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” “They were like us,” Paul says. “We are like them. Don’t think you can’t fall as they did, and don’t think that you can’t escape just because they didn’t. Don’t be idolaters and desire evil like they did.” That’s the preaching point of this passage in Exodus: “Do not desire evil as they did.”

Part of what Exodus 32 does is show in vivid colors how evil evil can be. The Puritans had some of the best titles when it came to books about sin. Samuel Bolton wrote a book called, “Sin: the Greatest Evil.” Thomas Watson wrote “The Mischief of Sin.” Jeremiah Burroughs famously wrote “The Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin.” We see that last one in the Israelites example at Sinai with the calf. God wants us to see the true character and anatomy of sin, so that we will not desire sin as they did.

All of us feel tempted to sin. You’ve already felt tempted this morning. When you had to get your kids ready and get here, you had any number of temptations that are common to man. Here, God says, “I want you to see just how heinous sin is.” We consider sin a light thing. Just think about the way our culture talks about it. Our culture is perfectly happy to say, “I make mistakes, but nobody is perfect. I have growth edges. I’m on a learning curve.” The have all sorts of euphemisms for the word they don’t want to say: “sin.” I want you to notice five things about sin from Exodus 32 that will show its true character to us.

Sin Disobeys the Word of God.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism gives this definition: “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” 1 John 3:4 says, “…sin is lawlessness.” Sin disobeys the word of God.

With the golden calf, Israel broke the first commandment:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

“You shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:2-3

What did they say in verse 1? “Up, make us gods who shall go before us.”

They also violated the second commandment:

“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. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…

Exodus 20:4-5a

In verse 4, we read that “[Aaron] fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. They thought they could worship the Lord in the way that they wanted to, and that God would be happy that they were worshiping him—as if he were sitting in heaven, desperate for human attention and worship, saying, “Well, as long as you mean well and you’re sincere about it, I don’t care how you worship me.” Nothing could be further from the truth!

In verse 5, Aaron says, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.” They intend to worship YHWH, but to do it by means of this cow. Just because we think we’re directing our worship to God doesn’t mean he’s receiving it as true worship. They may have said that it was a feast to the Lord, but the Lord looked down and said, “That’s an abomination.”

They also broke the third commandment:

“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain… Exodus 20:7a

Notice how (v. 4) “they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” They declared this statue, formed of molten metal, to be their gods. How much more egregiously can you “take the name of the LORD your God in vain” than to have a statue of your own making and say, “There is the Lord”?

Aaron participated in baptizing their blasphemy. We see his weakness at this moment in verse 1, where it says that “the people gathered themselves together”. It could almost be translated as “the people ganged up on him”, and he quickly acquiesced to their demands.

Finally, they (very likely) broke the seventh commandment:

“You shall not commit adultery. Exodus 20:14

Look at verse 6 again: “…the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” That may sound innocent enough. The word “play” (in Hebrew) can mean anything from simple sport and frivolity to sexual sin. Verse 25 says that “Aaron had let them break loose,” so it sounds like they were doing more than just getting up and having a fun time.

Notice how the passage that we just read in 1 Corinthians 10 goes from the episode of the golden calf to cautioning against sexual immorality, which connects with a passage in Numbers. I think that in the mind of Paul (and in the mind of Moses as he wrote this by the inspiration of the Spirit), the phrase “rose up to play” was not about throwing a Frisbee or playing four square or ga-ga ball. It was about immorality and sensuality. It’s hard to imagine that they engaged in pagan worship of a pagan god without also acting like pagans in the process.

The Israelites’ disobedience was all the more striking because of what was taking place at that very moment on Mount Sinai. What was Moses receiving? I know we skipped over Exodus 25-31, but he received two kinds of instruction. First, the instructions for the tabernacle. The tabernacle is unusually important, even though we are skipping over it—much more so than we realize as contemporary Western readers. Just think of the sheer number of verses given to it. We have all of these chapters specifying, “Here’s how you build it,” and then we even more chapters describing how they actually built it. In many places, they’re almost completely repetitive. The construction of the tabernacle was hugely important for the life of Israel.

The tabernacle was Mount Sinai, but dwelling in the midst of the people. I don’t have time to flesh that all out, but think about what you know about the tabernacle. As you approached the tabernacle, there was an altar. As you approached Mount Sinai, Moses built an altar at its foot (Exodus 24)?

The tabernacle had a tri-partite division. There was a sort of outer court that good Jews were allowed to enter. Then there was a closer court, where certain holy men could go. Finally, there was the holiest of holy places, where only one man can go—and that once a year. This is modeled after the same we’ve seen at Sinai. At the foot of the mountain, there were some barriers—“Here’s where the faithful Israelites can be.” Then, some of the leading holy men were farther up the mountain. Finally, only one man (Moses, the spiritual leader) can go in to meet with God at the top of the mountain. There, at the top, is where the presence of God dwells, just like the glory of the Lord fills the Most Holy Place in the tabernacle. So, the tabernacle would be a semi-permanent representation of Mount Sinai, right in the midst of the people. That’s why there are so many verses dealing with it.

What else did Moses receive instructions about? The priesthood. Who are the priests? What are their garments like? How do they perform their duties? Think about it: God is telling Moses how they are to worship him. He’s telling them about true worship in the tabernacle and with the priesthood.

Yet, we see the Israelites being led astray by their soon-to-be high priest, Aaron. They break every instruction related to true worship. That makes the golden calf all the more heinous. Moses is hearing from the Lord, “Here’s what it looks like to worship me in spirit and truth,” and here are the people below the mountain, doing exactly the opposite. They don’t have the patience to wait for Moses to come down, and Aaron doesn’t have the respect to wait, so he leads them astray as they press him to do so. Sin disobeys the word of God.

Sin Rejects the Character of God

The golden calf episode is a repudiation of God as God. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,” he says. “I’m not a cow. I am a jealous God, who doesn’t look lightly upon your treachery. I am an invisible God. Remember when I appeared on the mountain: you heard my voice, but saw no form. Now you want to see a form.” In a myriad of ways, they’re rejecting God as God. “You’re invisible? We want a God who we can see. You brought us out of Egypt? No, these gods brought us out of Egypt.”

Sin is law-breaking, but it’s more than that. It’s a repudiation of the law-giver. Sin says, “I don’t like the law and character of God. I don’t like God as God, so I will fashion my own god.” These people didn’t know whom they were dealing with. Remember what I’ve said all throughout this series: the big theme in Exodus is, “The God who makes himself known.” “Who are you? What is your name? What are you like?” We’ve seen it in the burning bush. We’ve seen it in the deliverance of Israel. We’ve seen it in his power, wonder, plagues, and provision. We’ve seen it now in the law, given on Sinai.

Yet they still don’t know who he is! If they did, they wouldn’t think that he could be captured in the form of a bull. What’s a really hurtful thing to say to your parents, a sibling, or a friend? “I hate you!” is pretty rough. But know what might be even worse? “I wish you had never been born. I wish you didn’t exist.” But we are often too nice to say those things, even though we feel them, so we say this: “Why do you have to be the way that you are? Why are you always like that?” Of course, we are sinners, and sometimes the way that we are is not the way that we should be, and we understand that. But when you just level that at your brother or sister, it’s almost worse than saying “I hate you,” because it’s saying, “The way you are is the way I wish you weren’t.”

That’s what they are saying to God as they make this golden calf. As they say, “Make something out of these earrings, Aaron,” they’re saying, “God, we don’t like the way that you are. We don’t deny that you exist. We’ll call you by YHWH and have a feast to you. We’ll worship you as we want to worship you, but we don’t like the way that you are.” That describes so much of our rebellion. Sin not only rejects the commandments of God, but rejects God himself.

Such sin will not be overlooked because we were energetic or sincere. These Israelites may have been perfectly sincere in thinking that they could worship a cow and call it YHWH; yet, as one commentator says, “Love may cover a multitude of sins. Religious activity does not.” I love how R.C. Sproul puts it:

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. R.C. Sproul – “What is Reformed Theology?”

Man-made worship, designed for us and by us to not intrude upon our fun, is useless for our real needs. In the beginning, God created man in his own image, and we have been returning the favor ever since. Sin disobeys the commandments of God and rejects his character.

Sin Suppresses the Truth of God

The New Testament understands this episode as a sad and quintessential picture of sin. In Acts 7, in Stephen’s sermon before he was stoned, he recounts Israel’s rebellious history and talks about the golden calf. He says that they made it, “and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.” They said, “That’s something we contributed to. You see that? Those are my earrings! Aaron, way to go! Man, you know how to hammer that thing up. We did that together!” It takes a village to do that sort of idolatry.

This is what it is like with all idolatry. We’re so invested in the gods of our own making. Part of why we love them is because we can stand back and say, “I had something to do with that. You see this house? See this job? How about how fast and smart I am? See my kids? See these grades? I had something to do with those!” We love those gods—but they always let us down. Later in Acts, when Paul had the audacity to speak against their statues, the people became furious and wanted to kill him. When you invest so much in your gods, you’re irate when people try to tear them down.

What does Paul say in Romans 1? You probably know this famous verse, but perhaps you didn’t realize that it was connected:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Romans 1:21-23

This is a description of the great exchange. There’s a glorious exchange of Christ’s righteousness for our sins, but this is the exchange that precedes that one. They exchanged the glory of an invisible, transcendent, holy, and immortal God—for a cow. I love cheeseburgers and milk, but at the end of the day, it’s a cow.

Paul says, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools…” This could be waved as a banner over our world. Look at how wise all the smart people were. They thought they were so clever, there on the foot of Mount Sinai. “Look at what we’ve done. Moses has disappeared, but we’ve made it! We put it together. We got our gold, Aaron fashioned this, and now we’re going to get up and have a party. We’ve arrived!” They were feeling pretty good about themselves.

But the verdict from heaven was, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools…” It’s always our temptation, just as it was theirs, to live by sight, not faith. Think about it: there might have been 2 million people, and hardly any of them knew Moses personally. We’re seeing all of this up-front, up-close-and-personal stuff about Moses, Aaron, and the 70 elders, but how many of these 2 million people knew Moses? Not many. That’s why they say, “This Moses—we don’t even know who he is. The man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt? We don’t know what has become of him.”

Up to this point, it’s quite possible that all of Moses’ trips up and down the mountain were day trips. Maybe he even spent an occasional night up there. They saw him come and go, back and forth, back and forth—and now he’s been up there for a while, and they don’t know how long he’s going to be gone. We’ve already seen in Exodus 24 that he’ll be up there 40 days and 40 nights, so he’s been up there a good long while. So they’re wondering, “Where did he go? I’ve heard about this Moses. Somebody said they saw him once, and he’s supposedly our great deliverer. But he just disappeared up the mountain. What are we going to do? Let’s make a calf.”

You have to try to understand the attraction of the golden calf. They could see it. They knew it was valuable (because it came from their own gold). They could touch it, bow down to it, and sacrifice to it. It was their skill which crafted it. But here’s what was most important: in having that golden calf, they were finally like everyone else. Remember, they’d been out of Egypt for only a few months. How long had they been in Egypt? 400 years. Everything about Egypt was normal to them, and everything about YHWH was now seeming pretty strange. As far as they knew, everyone had statues, golden calves, and idols. But now they’re out here in the wilderness, supposedly having an invisible God who speaks to them—but they might die if they get to close, and their leader is up on the mountain. Boom. A golden calf makes sense to them.

When you hear “calf,” sometimes you think of a little struggling newborn animal, but that’s not really what the word conveys. You could translate it as a “young bull,” which was very likely modeled after the god Apis. Apis was thought to be the herald and embodiment of a god named Ptah, who was the chief deity in the Egyptian Memphis area. You can see the statues of Apis (a bull). So they said, “We know what this looks like. We know how to do this.”

In Exodus 25-31, the emphasis is on true worship—contrasting with false, idolatrous worship in Exodus 32. And Aaron has the audacity to make an altar! What do you do at an altar? You sacrifice. Why? For sins! This bull was going to atone for their sins?

Here they are, commanding Aaron what to do, instead of receiving commands from the Lord. They were too busy speaking and not spending enough time listening. There’s an interesting play on words that we’ll see when we get to verse 7. We see the word “up” in verse 1—”Up, make us gods who shall go before us”—and verse 6: They rose up early the next day…” Then, in verse 7, the Lord says, “Moses, go down.” I wonder if there’s a play on words: part of their idolatry and false worship is “We can go up and figure out how God wants to be worshiped, when everything we’ve seen so far shows that true worship comes by waiting for God’s messenger to come down, speak to us, and give us what we need to hear.” They suppressed the truth of God.

Sin Squanders the Blessings of God

The Israelites should have been enjoying the fruits of their new covenant relationship with God. Remember, we saw in Exodus 24 how the covenant was established. There was this great ceremony, as Moses and the elders came up the mountain. Now, Moses disappears on the mountain and receives all the laws about the tabernacle.

This is the next bit of action here in Exodus 32. Just weeks have passed since the covenant. The blood had hardly dried when God’s people are violating their covenant obligations. You remember what they said in Exodus 24:3? “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do,” and again in verse 7: “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” How long did that last?

But it’s even worse than we think. Twice in the book of Exodus, we have record of God’s people gathering in some formal way for eating and drinking. Exodus 24:11: “they beheld God, and ate and drank.” Remember, that’s the conclusion of our covenant renewal ceremony: we have the book, the blood, the bread of the covenant. They had a kind of sacramental meal together.

But where’s the second occasion? Verse 6: “And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” It’s an abomination. They’re twisting an perverting the sacramental meal that they enjoyed with YHWH on the mountain, having it with their so-called god, the golden calf. Their sin was even worse than we imagine. How quickly and badly they have fallen from the heights of this covenant arrangement and vows to the depths of the golden calf. This is like having a beautiful wedding ceremony and having an affair on your honeymoon. “Yay! Celebration! We promise! We have a feast together! Yay!” A few days later, you walk in and somebody is hooking up with your spouse. That’s what it’s like.

They’re repeating the same sad pattern that we have seen in the Bible before. How many times do we see God coming, graciously establishing a covenant with his people—and then the very next thing we see is sin? The covenant with Adam was in Genesis 2. Genesis 3? The Fall. The covenant with Noah was in Genesis 8. Genesis 9? Noah is drunk and naked. The covenant with Abraham was in Genesis 15. Genesis 16? Sarah has a plan, and he’s shacking up with Hagar.

We look back and say, “How could they be so dumb?” That’s exactly what the Holy Spirit wants you to say, and then to look at yourself. Here’s one of the great fundamental truths in all the universe: sin makes you stupid. When you see other people’s sin, you say, “You’re throwing away what for what? Think! What happened to you?” We’re meant to look back at the golden calf and this habit of covenant betrayal and say, “Guys! Ladies! Kids! What are you thinking?” Then we say, “Oh yeah, I have the same temptations and struggles.” That’s why Paul says that these were given as examples, “that we might not desire evil as they did.”

Sin Forgets the Goodness of God

Listen to how the Psalmist describes this in Psalm 106. He describes the relationship between God and Israel:

Both we and our fathers have sinned; we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness. Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works; they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea. Psalm 106:6-7

There’s the problem: they didn’t remember! Later, it goes on:

But they soon forgot his works; they did not wait for his counsel. But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness, and put God to the test in the desert; he gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them. Psalm 106:13-15

Then we come to verse 19:

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, wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. Psalm 106:19-22

Sin forgets the goodness of God. That’s the story of Israel. “Don’t you remember what happened at the Red Sea? Can’t you recall the plagues at Egypt? Why make this golden calf?” Because they forgot.

We forget. We forget these stories and our own stories. We forget of the times when God brought us out of the pit. We forget all the times we’ve come with sin, and God has given us a sweet sense of relief. We forget all the times that we’ve prayed and prayed and seen an answer to that prayer. We’ve forgotten the goodness of God.

They forgot the literal gold in their ears. Where did they get that gold? They were slaves. The only reason they had gold was because God gave them the plunder of Egypt. Just a few months ago, they had nothing. The very gold in their ears was a symbol of all they had forgotten. God gave it to them, and now they use it to make an idol?

As Paul draws our attention to in 1 Corinthians 10, we are tempted in all of these ways. We, like them, are living between baptism and the Promised Land. Their baptism was passing through the waters of the Red Sea. Their Promised Land was literally the Promised Land. They were in the in-between time of their baptism and the Promised Land, just like us—and just like them, we disobey, reject, suppress, squander, forget.

Do you have eyes to see the mischief of sin, the audacity of sin, the ugliness of sin, and the exceeding sinfulness of sin? This terrible betrayal of YHWH by his covenant people is a turning point in the book of Exodus. Of course, even though this sermon ends at verse 6, this story doesn’t end there. Part of what this story is meant to incite in the minds of the readers is the question, “Well, what would become of Israel? Would anyone intercede for them? Could atonement be made for them? Would the nation be immediately snuffed out?” Think about it. They’ve grumbled and complained here and there, but this is the first big-time, nation-wide rebellion. Would this be the end of God’s people?

Will your sin mean the very end of you? We know what’s coming. We know that there’s a mediator. Here it’s Moses, who will intercede and pray on their behalf—just as we have a mediator: Christ, in heaven. We know that God will reveal his character to them once again, not just in his just fury over their sin, but when he gives that quintessential definition of his character: “The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love…” This is why this is in your Bible: so that you’ll flee from sin, and when you sin and God brings you to your senses, you’ll run so hard to God. We know the end of the story, and we’re about to celebrate it: as ugly, heinous, and absolutely egregious as the sin with the golden calf was, there is a Lamb who was even stronger yet. There is one who can lay a hand on us both, and who will provide a sacrifice for sins once for all, forever.

Let’s pray. Our heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. We thank you for this warning. You are gracious to warn us of sin, and to show us its ugliness. Let us see it, and let us then savor Christ—the new life and hope that we find in him alone. In his name we pray, amen.

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