Exodus (Lesson 62)

Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W.

Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delane, Florida.

Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior.

Now here's your host, Pastor James W.

Knox.

Hope you can stay with us for the next half an hour.

We're studying the Bible book of Exodus.

We are studying a key chapter, not only in that book, but in all God's Holy Word.

Exodus chapter 32, the tragic golden calf incident.

Exodus 32 · chapter mention

Exodus 32.

If you can get a Bible and follow along with us, that'll be a blessing.

We have seen the following Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving from God the law written with the finger of God on tables of stone that is to govern the Hebrew people in their lives in the promised land.

God has led them out of Egyptian bondage.

He has brought them safely across the Red Sea.

He has delivered them from the pursuing armies of Pharaoh.

He has fed them with bread from heaven, morning and evening.

He has guided them in the wilderness with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

He has met their every need.

And yet, while Moses is on the mountain receiving the law from God, the people come to Aaron and ask Aaron to make a god for them.

They take their golden earrings and give them to Aaron.

Aaron melts down that gold, forms and fashions that gold into a calf, and the people worship that golden calf and call it the God that brought them out of Egypt.

Now, as incredible as all that may sound, that's exactly what happened.

So God says to Moses, I am through with those people.

They're your people, they're not mine.

You brought them out of Egypt, I didn't.

And then he goes a step farther and says, I'm going to consume them, every one of them.

I'm going to wipe them out, and I'll start all over again and make a brand new nation, starting with you, Moses.

Moses, interceding with God, not really on behalf of the people, but on behalf of God, says to the Lord, Don't do that.

The Gentile nations will say that the Israelite people died in the wilderness because you did not love them or could not bring them into the promised land.

Your name is at stake.

And Moses called on God to repent.

And so we saw and learned that repentance has nothing to do with, or not does not necessarily have to do with turning from sin, but it does have to do with changing one's course or changing one's direction.

And so we pick up our reading in Exodus 32 and verse number 13, Exodus 32, verse 13, the Bible says, remember, this is Moses speaking to God.

Exodus 32:13

The Bible says, Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants to whom thou swearest by thine own self.

See, God's word, God's name, God's honor is on the line, according to Moses.

And said, Son of the heaven, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven.

And all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.

And the Lord, watch this, and the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

Now God cannot sin, he's never sinned.

Nothing God does is sinful.

But he does repent.

The Bible says in the days of Noah that it repented God that he'd made man on the earth.

He decided to go a new direction.

The Bible says in 1 Samuel that God repented of having made Saul king over Israel.

He decided to go a new direction.

And here God repented of the word that he had spoken, that he would destroy the Israelites and make a new nation from Moses.

He changed direction in answer to the humble, scriptural, God-honoring prayer that Moses offered on behalf of the people.

Verse 15.

Now it's Moses' turn to get angry.

You know, if God and Moses ever got angry at the same time, that would have been the end of the Israelite nation.

Verse 15.

And Moses turned and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand.

The tables were written on both their sides, on the one side and on the other, were they written.

Now, we don't know if that's uh there's tables plural.

You've seen the picture, like look like uh two little tombstones stuck together side by side.

And some have said written on both sides, meaning on the left side table and on the right side table.

Others have said uh written on both sides, the front side and the back side.

That doesn't matter.

What matters is that God wrote his words.

And Moses has in his hands the very words of God written by God himself.

And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.

Joshua's concerned, he's he's uh he's worried, there they're they're in battle.

And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome, but the noise of them that sing do I hear.

How about that?

It sounded like the chaotic confusion of battle.

It sounded like the the roaring, banging, confused, disorderly sounds that come from combat.

Now, Joshua, he's he's a military man.

He's gonna lead the fighting forces into Canaan land.

He thinks he's hearing warfare.

Moses said, no, no, it's that golden calf kind of music.

No, no, it's that idolatrous kind of music.

No, no, that's that's that's uh the people singing that you hear, and and Joshua says, No, it's noise, and Moses said, Yes, I understand, but when people start worshiping golden calves, and when people start substituting idols for God, and when people turn their back on what's right, they adopt a style of music that's noise.

It's noise.

Did you know that sixty years ago in the United States of America, no matter what church you entered, you would never mistake the music in that church for the sound of artillery or rifle fire.

You would not hear the slamming, banging, percussion sounds that accompany conflict.

You wouldn't hear sounds akin to steel clanging against steel.

You wouldn't hear the shoutings and the screams and the well, look what he says.

Noise.

It's the noise of them that sing, do I hear?

I know what you're gonna say.

I know what you're gonna say.

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, no doubt about it.

That's a wonderful verse of scripture.

I know what you're gonna say.

We ought to praise God with this and praise God with that.

I understand that.

I listen, I know all those verses, I understand all those verses.

I just want to know, I just want to know why it is that Joshua thought these people were engaged in battle and in conflict instead of being engaged in the worship of God.

He obviously knew the sound of singing that is offered in praise and worship to Jehovah.

He'd participated in that in Exodus chapter 15.

Exodus 15 · chapter mention

But this was a sound that he did not recognize as connected with the worship of God.

This was a sound that he had never heard before in connection with the worship of God.

It was a it was a new thing.

It was a golden calf thing, it was an idol thing, it was a reject the true God that delivered us thing.

And so down they come.

Verse 19.

And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing.

First thing he sees, the golden calf.

Second thing he sees, people dancing to the noise of their new kind of music.

And Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands and broke them beneath the mount.

You say, What a horrible thing.

Moses broke the Ten Commandments.

No, he didn't.

No, he didn't.

Moses broke the tables of stone on which the commandments were written.

The children of Israel broke the commandments.

Were they not told, Thou shalt have no other gods?

Is that is that not what God said?

Was that not his first commandment?

And there they set up this golden calf and say, These be thy gods.

Were they not commanded not to make any graven image to worship it?

Was that not the second of God's commandments?

And are they not now engaged in the worship of a graven image?

You see, some people, some people treat the Bible like a holy thing.

They wouldn't, you know, don't don't lay a magazine on top of the Bible, don't lay a newspaper on top of the Bible, don't put anything on top of the Bible.

But they would break every commandment inside the Bible and think nothing of it.

Yes, Moses did throw those tables to the ground, and yes, Moses did break those tables of stone, probably, well, no, not probably, without a doubt.

The greatest piece of writing since time began until time is no more was on those tables of stone.

God wrote with his finger on those tables and Moses broke them in his anger, in his wrath.

Moses broke those tables of stone, but he's not the lawbreaker, he didn't break the law.

The children of Israel broke God's law.

They broke God's commandments.

You know, if I tore a Bible into a hundred pieces, which I wouldn't do, if I tore a Bible into a hundred pieces, but I did what God told me to do on each of those one hundred pieces, I would not be guilty of breaking God's words.

But if you have a Bible that's perfectly intact, in fact, it's as bright and shiny and new as it was the day a family member gave it to you because you haven't read it, studied it, prayed over it, carried it anywhere.

If you have a Bible that's intact, but you're not obeying or following any of it, what good is it?

So Moses throws those tables down, and they are broken beneath the mount.

Verse 20, and he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel to drink it.

That's a remarkable thing for a number of reasons.

Number one, do you see the power that God placed upon this righteous man Moses?

Why, if you walked into a group of thirty idolaters in the midst of their idolatrous revelry and tried to put a stop to that thing, you'd likely be harmed thereby.

Consider what happened when the Apostle Paul spoke at Ephesus against the idolatrous worship there.

Consider what happened at Philippi.

How many times was he beaten, stoned, attempted murder against the man for preaching against, just preaching against false religion and vain idolatry.

Moses walks in the midst of a crowd, not of thirty, not of three hundred, not of three thousand, but of merely two million people, walks into the midst of that revelry, lays his hands upon that golden calf, a hush comes over that crowd, a silence falls on that multitude, the music stops, the dancing stops, the singing stops, and everyone watches with wonder and awe.

As Moses carries that worthless piece of junk, Moses carries that lifeless, dead statue over to the place where it was forged.

He rekindles that fire, he heats that thing up, he throws that golden calf in that fire, and it begins to melt.

It loses its shape, all that engraving work that Aaron did, all that molding and fashioning, and then Moses takes that gold out, that liquid molten gold out of that fire, stands while it cools, and the people watch.

The people look in amazement.

They're afraid, they're in awe.

They can't move.

And as that gold cools, Moses then beats it to a fine powder.

That didn't take a minute or two.

I don't know how many hours went by.

I don't know how long a time passed, but there they stand.

The revelers and the godly man, the idolaters and the holy man, the leaders of the transgression and the man who's going to put a stop to it for God.

And Moses gets water, I don't know how much water, but he he sprinkles that gold dust in that water, and he demands that those people drink that water with the remnants of that golden calf in it, and nobody rises up, nobody refuses, nobody walks away, nobody punches him in the nose.

God gives Moses power, like he has perhaps never given a man power before in the history of the world.

Just it's it's beyond our comprehension.

It's hard to imagine how that scene could have run its course and ended the way it did.

But he made them drink it.

Every one of them.

They drank it down.

They drank it all.

The Bible says, He made.

They didn't want to, he made.

They weren't happy about it.

He made the children of Israel drink of it.

I'll tell you something.

God's men from the dawn of time have done what they had to do.

They have stood for God's truth, and that required them to stand against anything and everything that men were worshiping, adoring, idolizing, celebrating, bowing down to, dancing in front of, that took their heart, soul, strength, and mind away from the adoration of the true and living God.

Whether it was Noah renouncing the sins of his day, Gideon tearing down the idol in the town marketplace, the Apostle Paul standing on Mars Hill denouncing superstition, Jesus Christ rebuking the scribes and the Pharisees, or a radio preacher today crying out against your idols and your statues and your liberalism and your modernism and your carnality and your humanism and your perverted Bibles and your wicked sinful.

Practices tolerated in your churches, God's people have always needed the leadership of men who would stand and denounce and wage spiritual warfare against every false way.

Preacher?

Preacher?

Are you all positive?

Why the Bible's not?

Why God isn't?

Why the times the times won't allow for it?

What are you doing?

Just trying to keep people happy so they keep giving you money?

That's not what you were called to do.

That's not why God gave you the Holy Spirit and the Holy Bible.

You have got to stand for what is right, but you've also got to stand against what is wrong.

You have got to proclaim the truth, but you have also got to cry out against what is false.

Moses made the people drink it.

What did he do with that golden calf?

He didn't say, Well, that's that's nice if that helps you.

He didn't say, Well, that's one way of looking at it.

He didn't say, well, you know, at least the attendance is up.

He didn't say, but the people they're just so excited about it.

We haven't had this kind of enthusiasm around here in years, and the young people, oh, the young people, they just love it.

I mean, you've got to relate to young people.

No, he took that golden calf and he destroyed it.

For God and and for the people.

How about you, friend?

Are you for anything?

Good.

Are you against anything?

Good.

You need to be for what God's for, and you need to be against what God's against.

And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee?

That thou hast brought so great a sin upon them.

Moses figured that they I mean they must have taken his wife and children hostage and threatened to boil them in oil to get him do something like that.

They surely, surely they had him hung up by his thumbs and there beating the bottom of his feet with rods.

There must have been some incredible torture that the people put Aaron through.

Moses, look, it it doesn't even enter Moses' mind that Aaron did this willingly without a struggle.

He says, What did this people unto thee?

Surely, surely, they must have brought incredible physical or emotional pressure upon you to get something like this to happen.

What did this people unto thee?

That thou hast brought so great a sin upon them.

All right, number one, idolatry is a great sin.

Number two, number two, leaders have to say no when the desires of the people are sinful.

Number three, if they don't say no, they are held responsible.

Do you see that?

Do you see that?

Yes, the people committed a great sin.

Moses said to Aaron, You brought this sin upon them.

Wait a minute.

They wanted a substitute God, but you gave it to them.

Wait a minute.

They wanted an idol, but you made it for them.

Wait a minute, they wanted a golden calf, but you fashioned it with your hands.

Aaron, it was your job to say, no, this is wrong.

Aaron, it was your job to say we don't do that.

Aaron, it was your job to say we can't dishonor God in that fashion.

But Aaron, but Aaron, listen to me, mother of a teenager, father of a rebel, pastor, youth worker, listen to me.

It was not Aaron's job to give the people what they wanted.

It was Aaron's job to lead the people in God's ways.

It is not your job to keep your children happy.

It's your job to keep your children right in the eyes of God.

It is not your job to keep your youth department happy.

It's your job to keep your youth department right in the eyes of God.

It is not your job to keep your congregation happy.

It's your job to keep your congregation right in the sight of God.

If you are a parent raising a child and your children are glad to follow your leadership as you walk according to the word of God, then count your blessings.

If they're not glad about it, tough.

If you are a youth worker, youth pastor, and you have a congregation of young people and parents who delight to walk in the ways of the Lord and want to be clean, pure, holy, and biblical, count your blessings.

If they don't want that, too bad.

If you're the pastor of a church and the people there delight in walking in the truth of the Holy Bible, count your blessings.

If they want to sin, if they want this modern, liberal, unscriptural, unholy, ungodly mess that's infecting our churches, if that's what they want, then it is your responsibility to stand for God and tell those people we are not creating a substitute God here.

We are not making a golden calf here.

Yes, the people sinned.

Moses said, You brought this great sin upon them.

You know when the Bible says a bishop must be blameless?

There it is right there.

You can't keep the people from sinning.

But you can make sure you do not cause them to sin.

Well, the time is gone again.

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