#988 - Exodus 32 – The Golden Calf

So to set the stage for this, remember that for the last month or forty days even, Moses has been up on the mountain, and he's been getting a lot of instructions how to build the tabernacle, what the high priest is gonna wear, how to build all the different altars.

And the people have started to decide that Moses wasn't coming back, and this is what happened.

The golden calf, Exodus thirty-two.

"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.' Aaron answered them, 'Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me.' So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.

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 out of Egypt.' When Aaron saw this, he built an offer in front of the calf and announced, 'Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.' So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings.

Afterward, they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Go down because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt.

They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf.

They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, 'These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.' 'I have seen these people,' the Lord said to Moses, 'and they are a stiff-necked people.

Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.

Then I will make you into a great nation.' But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God.

'Lord,' he said, 'why should your anger burn against your people whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth? Turn from your fierce anger, relent, and do not bring disaster on your people.

Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self, 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.' Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands.

They were inscribed on both sides, front and back.

The tablets were the work of God.

The writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, 'There is the sound of war in the camp.' Moses replied, 'It is not the sound of victory.

It is not the sound of defeat.

It is the sound of singing that I hear.' When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned, and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them into pieces at the foot of the mountain.

Then he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire.

Then he ground it to powder, scattering it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.

Then he said to Aaron- What did these people do to you that you led them into such great sin? Do not be angry, my Lord, Aaron answered.