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Please Forgive Their Sin
Please Forgive Their Sin Exodus 32:1-35 Key Verse 32:32 “But now, please forgive their sin – but if not, blot me out of the book you have written.” Moses had spent forty days on the Mt. Sinai getting instruction from God concerning the construction of a tabernacle, the building of alters and other material to be used in the tabernacle and the making of priestly garments for Aaron and his descendants to wear when they ministered before the LORD. Before Moses went up the mountain to get these instructions, he had given the Israelites God’s Ten Commandments and various laws that would enable them to live in a Godly community. In chapter 24 it clearly says “When Moses went and told the people all the LORD’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, ‘Everything the LORD has said we will do.” After they responded like this Moses even wrote down all these words and laws so that they wouldn’t forget them. Finally, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy elders of Israel went up on the mountain, personally saw God and shared some fellowship Him by eating a meal their on the mountain. Now, just forty days later, the Israelites not only forgot about all this, it appears that they completely forgot about what they had witnessed in Egypt, at the crossing of the Red Sea and all throughout their travels to Mt. Sinai. Everything that that had experienced for the past several months indicated very clearly that God was among them and it was God who had rescued them from their bondage in Egypt. Yet after just forty days without their leader, they forgot all this and decided to break God’s second commandment by building themselves an idol made out of gold in the form of a calf. This passage shows us how easy it is for sinful human beings to completely forget about all the grace that God has shed on us and turn from his ways to follow our own ways. May God bless our study of this passage and help us to always remember the grace that He has given us in Jesus so that we don’t fall back into our sinful ways and get blotted out of the book that He has written. First, impatient forgetful people (1). Let’s take a careful look at verse 1. “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’” As I mentioned before, Moses had only been on the mountain for forty days. Forty days is not a long period of time. It is especially not a long period of time if you consider everything the Israelites had witnessed over the previous several months: God had struck the Egyptians with ten devastating plagues, led the Israelites through the Red Sea on dry ground, drowned the entire Egyptian army when they tried to follow, turned bitter water sweet, gave the Israelites quail when they complained that they had nothing to eat and then gave them manna from heaven to eat every day, brought water from a rock, fought for the Israelites so that a bunch of former salves could beat a standing army and went before them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Not only had God done all this, as this chapter begins the glory of the LORD was present before the Israelites appearing as a consuming fire that had descended on the mountain. Given all of this one would think that maybe they could be patient and wait for Moses just a little while longer, but according to the Bible they couldn’t. What makes their actions here even worse is the fact that just forty days before these events they had told Moses and God that they would do everything the LORD had commanded Moses when He had given Moses the Ten Commandments. If you go back and read the Ten Commandments you will see that the second commandment is very detailed and it forbids them to do precisely what they do in this chapter. The second commandment says, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Given all this and the very short period of time that Moses was on the mountain, I found it very hard to believe that the Israelites could fall into such a great sin so quickly, but then I thought about my life. Unfortunately I am very much like these Israelites and I think most people are. Most people, before they become Christians, lead sinful lives. We fall into patterns that feel comfortable to us, but they are sinful to God. When we are faced with any kind of challenge, we find it easiest just to go back to these old sinful ways of doing things rather than seeking God and waiting on God. The Israelites had been slaves in a pagan land for four hundred years. What they had seen and perhaps, what they were most familiar or comfortable with was gods made of silver or gold or just carved out of a tree or something. This is what they knew from their earliest childhood years, so when it seemed that Moses might never come back this is what they went back to. This is the sneakiness of sin and it is Satan’s trap. Instead of thinking about all of the grace that God has shed on us we tend to think about what makes us feel most comfortable. This can take many forms, but we all have to struggle hard not to do this. When a time of trial or uncertainty comes upon us, we need to take time out, think about a God’s grace that He has given to us and simply wait on Him. We should not give into the temptation to go back to those old sinful ways that were so comforting to us before we came to Jesus. Second, Aaron a very bad leader (2-24). Before Moses had gone up the mountain with his aide Joshua, Moses left two men in charge, Aaron, his older brother and an old man named Hur who was likely the father of Bezalel who we learned about last week. In this chapter there is no mention of Hur. It appears that the people only approached Aaron with their request to have golden gods made for them. I don’t know why they didn’t take this request to Hur, but from Aaron’s response we can see that he was definitely not a good leader. A good leader needs to be strong. A good leader is not pushed around by the people that he leads, instead he leads them and pushes them to do what is right. Moses was great leader and there is a big contrast to the two in this chapter as we shall see. When the people came to Aaron and asked him to make them gods to go before them, he should of said, “No way! Do you really want to break the second commandment of God? Doesn’t it say that God will punish anyone who does this down to the third and fourth generation of their children? Do you want to curse your own children?” But Aaron didn’t say anything like this. He offered no resistance at all. He simply instructed the people to give him the gold earrings that the women and children were wearing. After they gave him these he simply melted them down and made them an idol. I want to look at verses 4 and 5 and a verses 22-24 together. I think these verses clearly show how bad leaders act. Let start with verses 4 and 5. “He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, ‘Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD.’” If you look carefully at verse four you will see that it tells us that Aaron crafted this idol. He took time to carefully fashion it with a tool. He didn’t stop with just making the idol. After proclaiming that this idol was the gods that brought the Israelites out of Egypt, he continued on and built an alter so that they could worship idol. Building alters was very symbolic in Old Testament times and it was always done to worship the one true God or various other fake gods like this idol. Verses 4 and 5 make it very clear that Aaron actively participated in the making of this idol, but if we look over at verses 22-24 we see Aaron saying something very different. Look at verses 22-24. “’Do not be angry, my lord,’ Aaron answered. ‘You know how prone these people are to evil. 23 They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ 24 So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!’” Not only does Aaron not admit to making the idol with his own hands he blames the people that he was supposed to be leading. If they weren’t so stiff necked he never would have made that idol. But didn’t stop there, because then he said that he didn’t really make it at all. All he did was throw the gold in the fire and puff! Out came the golden calf. So you see, it really wasn’t Aaron’s fault at all. Bad leaders never take responsibility for anything. Sinners are the same. We never want to take responsibility for our own actions. We always try to justify our sinful behavior by blaming someone else or the circumstances that we find ourselves in. However, in the end we will have to take complete responsibility for our actions. 2 Corinthians 5:10 says “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” At that time we won’t be able to blame anyone or anything for our actions. We will receive what is due us for what we did – it will not matter if others pushed us to do it or not. Third, the seriousness of sin (25-29,35) Romans 6:23a says “For the wages of sin is death,” I think many people today forget this because they only focus on the second half of that verse “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” When I read this chapter I was reminded that sin is a matter of life and death from God’s point of view. When Moses got down to the camp he saw a terrible sight. Verse 6 says that they were indulging in revelry, which has sexual connotations and was what the pagans did when they worshipped their demons. Verse 25 says that they were wild and out of control and it also says that this was Aaron’s fault. Moses was so upset when he saw this that he had thrown the two tablets that God had made to the ground breaking them to pieces. Look at verse 26. “So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the LORD, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.” Moses first wanted to know if there was anyone left who was on the LORD’s side. As always, God reserved himself a remnant among the people. That remnant were the men of Moses’ own tribe, the Levites. What Moses told them to do then graphically shows us the seriousness of sin from God’s point of view. Look at verse 27. “Then he said to them, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘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 was not just speaking out of his own anger. He said that “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel says:” From this we can see that sinning is a matter of life and death. God did not compromise with sin in Moses time and we know that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. The wages of sin is death. This is a universal and everlasting truth. It does not change. It is true that Jesus came and paid off that debt for anyone who accepts Him, but that doesn’t change the gravity of sin. When we sin it costs a life to pay it off. I think this is a fact that Christians need to be reminded of again and again. In today’s society, I think Christians have forgotten about this and we go around just ignoring the sins we see others committing and treating our own sins as if they really don’t matter all that much because Jesus has paid off the price for them. This, in itself is a terrible sin. When we look at what the Levites did that day we tend to think that it was barbaric and not necessary, but from God’s point of view it was absolutely necessary. Sin needs to be forcibly cut out from among us. As Jesus told us if our right eye or our right hand causes us to sin it would be better for us to pluck out that eye or cut off that hand then to continue in the sin and be cast into hell. Fourth, Moses a great leader (30-34) We have already seen what a bad leader looks like in Aaron. In these verses we see what a great leader looks like. When Moses saw what was going on in the camp he took decisive action. That is the first mark of a good leader – they are not afraid to act even when that action is unpopular or even brutal. But Moses didn’t stop there. Punishing people is not the end for a great leader. Look at verse 30. “The next day Moses said to the people, ‘You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.’” A great leader cares for and shepherds the people he leads. Moses knew that leading the people to the Promised Land would do them no good if God were not with them. Doing anything without God’s blessing is always useless and Moses knew this. He had to find a way to make atonement for this terrible sin. Verse 31 and 32 really set Moses apart as a great leader. “So Moses went back to the LORD and said, ‘Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.’” If you look carefully at verse 32 I think you can see a foreshadowing of Jesus. Moses knew that the wages of sin is death, and he was willing to give his life for God to forgive the Israelites. I also got something else out of verse 32. That is the idea of absolute assurance of salvation. Moses was sure that he was written into God’s book. This book is the “Book of Life” that David talks about in Psalm 69, Paul talks about in Philippians 4 and John talks about repeatedly in Revelations. Moses had the blessed assurance that his name was in that book because he lived before God. He took sin very seriously. He knew the consequences of sin and was able to act on the peoples behalf because of it. Like Moses, we also need the blessed assurance that we are written into God’s “Book of Life.” If we have this assurance we can also be great leaders in this generation. We can take decisive action on God’s behalf. Without this assurance we will end up like Aaron, just being pushed around by others and our circumstances. The only way that we can have this blessed assurance is too understand the seriousness of sin, to accept the fact that Jesus paid off the price of our sins once and for all and to live each day deeply repenting of our sinful ways. May God help us to have this assurance. |
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