The Destructiveness of Idolatry (Exodus 32)

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Over the last thirty years or so, the world of banking has changed tremendously. I can remember when the use of ATM machines became prominent. No longer did you have to go the branch during business hours and deal with a teller to make your transaction. You could make transactions 24 hours a day, and many times somewhere other than at the bank. Then we started using debit cards instead of cash or checks, making it even more convenient, as if we were carrying the bank around with us in our wallets. Along came online banking, and now mobile pay features that we can use right from our smart phones. For most people, a visit to an actual branch of their bank is increasingly rare, because there are so many more convenient ways of taking care of their financial needs.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that a few years ago while walking the streets of Kathmandu, Nepal. That may seem like an unusual place to meditate on modern American banking practices. What set my mind off on this track was watching how the local people engaged in their religious practices. We visited a number of temples, and many of them had prominent altars and menacing statues of various deities, with priests wearing distinctive garments to identify themselves who could assist with whatever religious services needed to be performed. As we walked along the city streets, however, we also noticed that it was impossible to walk for 50 yards without passing some little shrine carved into the side of a building or set up on a post on the sidewalk. And then, in nearly every home or business, the first thing we would see when we walked in was a little altar with some tiny figures of various deities, sometimes positioned beside of photographs of deceased family members. You see, for these people, and countless others like them around the world, religion is much like banking for us. There are times when there is a major spiritual transaction that needs to take place, and for that, you have to make the journey to the temple. At other times, a need arises in the going about of one’s daily commute or routine schedule. So the little roadside shrine functions like a spiritual ATM machine where a person can drop in a few coins and withdraw some good mojo. And then there are the personal shrines. Leaving for work? Say some prayers to Ganesha and Grandma on the way out the door for a safe journey. And when you arrive at work, you can drop a coin in the pan in front of Shiva inside the office.

 For most of us, when we think of idolatry, that is the kind of thing that comes to mind. People bowing down in front of altars, statues, symbols, and images of false deities. But idolatry can take on more subtle forms as well. Sometimes an idol can be as invisible as a fleeting thought. Two things I know for sure about idol worship: (1) None of us are immune to the temptation of it; (2) It is destructive in whatever form or fashion it takes in our lives.

Now, in our text today, the idolatry on display is not subtle at all. It is everything but subtle! Everything about it slaps us as an unexpected surprise. This is not a scene of some primitive, uncivilized group of pagans who live isolated from any biblical truth about God. These are God’s own covenant people! These aren’t people who can argue that they just haven’t seen enough evidence to worship the one true God. He has just performed one miracle after another for their exclusive audience and benefit! These aren’t people who can say, “We didn’t know any better!” Last week, we examined Genesis 20, in which God set forth His law. The first three commandments all dealt with prohibition of idolatry. Don’t commit idolatry of the mind by having any other gods but the One True God. Don’t commit idolatry of the eye by making any images or objects for worship. Don’t commit idolatry of the mouth by using the Lord’s name in meaningless or dishonorable ways. You will no doubt recall that the Israelites said, before the Law was even given, that they were prepared to obey everything that the Lord commanded (19:8). And here we are, less than six weeks later in our text today, and they break out into full blown idolatry!

Friends, we must confess honestly that if the Old Testament Israelites could so easily fall into such gross demonstrations of idolatry, then the New Testament Christians are not immune to the potential. It was, after all, to Christian people that the Apostle John tenderly wrote, “Little children, guard yourselves from idols” (1 Jn 5:21). And the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:6 that the things experienced by the Exodus generation “happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.” So, let us consider the example set forth for us in this text about the destructiveness of idolatry, so that we might heed that New Testament admonition to guard ourselves from idols in our own lives.

I. The circumstances that give rise to idolatry (vv1-6)

It is a wasted effort to try to think up what factors lead anyone and everyone into idolatry. Bernard Ramm said, “The world itself is one immense idol … more powerful to the imagination and emotions than is the eternal invisible God.” Idolatry is the default religious setting for every person in the world. John Calvin said, “Every one of us is, even from his mother’s womb, expert in inventing idols.” He said, “man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” There is something within each of us that longs for contact with something or someone transcendent – beyond this world and this life, bigger than us, more powerful than us. That is why, no matter where you go in the world, you find idolatry on display. Paul describes it in Romans 1 when he says that every person can see enough evidence within themselves and in the world around them to know that there is an invisible, all-powerful, holy God who exists. But, he says, even though they know that such a Being exists, “they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” And so, wherever men are found, they can be found worshiping images of human-like or animal-like figures, represented in artwork or carvings from wood or stone. But our focus here is not to explain why anyone and everyone resorts to idolatry. It is to examine why, of all people, those who profess to know God can so easily slide into the destructive practice of idolatry. How is it that we ourselves, while professing to be in covenant relationship with God, cannot shut down the idol factory that is at work in our hearts and minds? And we see some of the factors that give rise to idolatry in our lives as we look at the idolatry of the Israelites in our text.

The first factor we observe is the people’s impatience to wait on the Lord. From other passages (24:18) we know that Moses was on the mountain alone with God for 40 days. Let’s call it 6 weeks, give or take. God had called Moses to go up, but did not indicate how long the sojourn would be. When Moses told the people what he was about to do, the people said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do” (24:3, 7). But, when Moses did not return soon, the people gave up waiting for the Lord’s timing. They said, “this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” (32:1). We can see many flaws in their thinking here, not the least of which is that they attributed to Moses what, in fact, the Lord had done, bringing them up out of Egypt. They speak as though Moses is the one whose plan and power and had accomplished all of this, and now they presume that Moses has just brought them out and abandoned them. But neither Moses nor the Lord had done any such thing. In fact, far from it, God was instructing Moses for how the people were to live out their lives in the worship and fear of the Lord. But it wasn’t happening soon enough, so they pressed Aaron to make an idol for them to worship.

It will often happen in our lives that God operates on a different time table than we want Him to. And when He doesn’t meet our deadlines, we begin to look for alternatives. We give up waiting on the Lord and seek to do things our own way – ways that seem right to us at the time, but in the end lead only to destruction. So, we learn from this that we must always wait with patient faith for the Lord to work and move, lest we slide into the idolatry of gods of our own making.

The second circumstance that we see giving rise to their idolatry here is a vacuum of spiritual leadership. They had a leader – Aaron. In fact, you will recall that Aaron held the position of second-in-command because of Moses’ special pleading with the Lord when he tried to excuse himself from God’s calling initially. And when Moses went up on the mountain, the Lord had instructed for the people to bring their concerns and issues to Aaron. He held the position of authority by the providence of God. But Aaron demonstrates here that he was not fit for such a leadership role. For one thing, he lacked courage. The people said, “make us a god who will go before us” (v1), and Aaron did just that. If there was any debate or deliberation about the matter, the text does not record it for us. The original language indicates that there may have been some pressure or coercion on the part of the people, but a spiritual leader has to have the courage to stand up to those kinds of pressures and be strong in the Lord. Aaron failed to do that. Not only did he cave in to their demands, but he fashioned the idol out of the very gifts God had provided Israel for their provision.

Not only did he lack courage, he also lacked conviction. Sometimes, saying “yes” to the Lord means saying “no” to the people under your leadership, and a strong spiritual leader will do that, no matter how difficult, because he stands on the authority of God’s word. Aaron had received the word of the Lord. He knew the commandments – have no other gods, make no graven images, do not take the Lord’s name in vain. But he compromised at every point because he did not have the conviction to stand on God’s truth. In response to the people’s clamoring for a god, Aaron should have said, “You have a God, and He has spoken, and this is what He said!” But he did not do that. In fact, from all we can tell in our Bibles, these six weeks had elapsed with no exposition of God’s Word at all among the people.

There is a frequently quoted, more frequently misquoted, and almost invariably misunderstood verse in the Proverbs that illustrates what is going on here perfectly. Proverbs 29:18 says, in the familiar words of the KJV, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Christian leaders have long understood this to mean that in order to preserve the future of their church or ministry, they must have some radical and unique “vision” or plan for the future. But this has nothing to do with what the Proverb is saying, and in fact, may mean exactly opposite of the intended message. The Hebrew word translated “vision” in the KJV is handled in other English versions with “revelation,” and the word rendered “perish” is more accurately translated as “cast off restraint.” So, the idea is that where God’s revelation – that is, the truth about Himself and His will that He has declared in His word – is not being made known, people will cast off all moral and ideological restraints and destroy themselves with idolatry and immorality. And that is exactly what we see happening here in Exodus 32. With Moses on the mountain for six weeks, and the silence of biblical exposition before the people, they begin to hunger for false gods who will approve of the unrighteous desires of their sinful nature.

In verse 6, where we read, “the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play,” there is more going on than meets the eye. These are euphemistic expressions in the ancient language. It means essentially that with this new god, created by Aaron, they could become lazy and gluttonous. They engorged themselves on food and intoxicated themselves with drink, and only arose from their reclined postures to “play.” But they weren’t playing church league softball. This word “play” is used in other passages to express sexual activities. So, essentially what is going on here is that the covenant people of God have cast off all restraint and given full license to their sinful desires, with the tacit approval of a god of their own making. So it is for all of us, when temptation appeals to our own sinful desires, if we are not willing to deny ourselves and reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, we will fashion in our imaginations a false deity who either heartily approves, or else winks as he turns a blind eye toward, our sin.

But all of this happens where there is a vacuum of spiritual leadership. Aaron didn’t have the courage or conviction to lead the people by feeding them on the Word of the Lord. And the same is true in many churches today where genuine spiritual leadership is lacking. The gifts of God begin to draw devotion away from God the giver. Keeping people happy becomes more important than keeping them holy. The word of God is drowned out by the clamor of carnal desire. More often, however, even where good leaders are present, there is the epidemic of professing believers removing themselves from the oversight of such spiritual leadership through coldness of fellowship and chronic absenteeism. This is why the writer of Hebrews admonishes us not to forsake the gathering of ourselves together (10:25). You may say, “I don’t need the church.” But you do! You may say, “That long-winded preacher just says the same thing every Sunday!” And he may, but do not discount your need to hear those same things said over and over again. By that repeated truth, God may be protecting you and steeling you against the slide into idolatry.

II. The destructiveness of idolatry (vv7-10; 15-24, 27-28)

Donia and I have some interesting conversations during our morning runs. The other day I was telling her that I think it is high time for me to pursue my PhD and write a dissertation on sarcasm in the Bible. Of course, she thought I was being sarcastic, and with me you never can tell. But the Bible is full of sarcastic humor if you know where to look for it. One of my favorite pieces of biblical sarcasm concerns idolatry and is found in Isaiah 44. There we read about a man who plants a tree, and the rain makes it grow, until the man cuts it down. He then takes half of it and builds a fire with it, and over that fire he warms himself and bakes bread and roasts meat. But the other half of it, “he makes into a god … falls down before it and worships; he also prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god’” (44:12-17). The Lord says that this man lacks the knowledge and understanding to say, “I have burned half of it in the fire …. Then I make the rest of it into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood.” He does not have the sense to say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (44:19-20).

The Psalmist also employs sarcasm to describe the idolater. In Psalm 115, he describes idols which “have mouths, but they cannot speak; they have eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but they cannot hear; they have noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands but they cannot feel; they have feet, but they cannot walk.” These gods which they worship are senseless, powerless, speechless; deaf, dumb, blind, and lame. And then the Psalmist says, “Those who make them will become like them.” You can imagine the Israelites, in drunken perversion carousing before their golden bull, saying to one another, “Our god must be okay with this, because he isn’t telling us to stop it!” And even Aaron demonstrates himself to be as ignorant the rest of them. When Moses confronts him about the idolatry that is taking place under his watch, Aaron has the audacity to say that, when he threw their gold into the fire, “out came this calf” (32:24). This is one of the places where I wish we had pictures in our Bibles, because I would like to see the look on Moses’ face when Aaron tells him this. But Aaron and the rest of the people have become as blind and dumb as the god they made.

Now, when we read these sarcastic passages, and even Aaron’s bold-faced lie in this passage, we are understandably inclined to giggle a little bit. But, we need to consider this idolatry from God’s perspective. It does not escape His notice. None of our sin ever does. He does not find the humor in it. After all that He has done for His people, to watch them turn their back on Him so quickly must be particularly grievous. Add to the anguish that, whereas His commandments are meant to safeguard His people, their idolatry is leading them on a path of destruction. It is no wonder that God deals so severely with this sin. Look at what God calls this display of idolatry: they have corrupted themselves (v7); they have turned aside (v8); they are obstinate (v9). Verse 25 says they were “out of control.” In verse 30, Moses calls it a “great sin.”

So, the destructiveness of idolatry is symbolized by three significant acts that Moses carries out. First, he demonstrates that the people have destroyed their covenant with God. When Moses returned from the mountain, he carried with him tablets containing God’s law, inscribed by God’s own hand (vv15-16). Is there anything on earth that could compare to the priceless value of these tablets? Could a gold-plated bull compare to a handwritten tablet containing God’s own word in His own hand? But to demonstrate the destruction that the people had brought upon their covenant with God, Moses “threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them” (v19). Some commentators go to great lengths here to say that Moses acted impetuously and let his anger get the best of him. But the Bible does not say that. In fact, on another occasion, Moses would succumb to his anger and defy the Lord out of outrage against the people, and the Lord would deal severely with Moses for that matter. But it doesn’t happen here. Inasmuch as we can tell from our text, Moses was acting on God’s authority in the destruction of the tablets to illustrate how they had destroyed their covenant with God. Thus, by this act, Moses was demonstrating that you cannot pick and choose which points of God’s law you will obey and disobey. You cannot merely break one of God’s commandments, for if you do, you have shattered them all because they are all interdependent and interconnected.  

Then, we notice that Moses took action to destroy their idol. Imagine the folly of worshiping a God who can be destroyed! One of the guarantees of our redemption in Jesus Christ is that death itself could not destroy Him! But Moses took the golden bull that the Israelites worshiped and burned it with fire, and then ground it to powder. So God will do with all rivals for the worship He alone deserves. He will see to it that all of them come to nothing. But what Moses does next appears somewhat confusing. He took the powder of the idol’s remnants and scattered it over the water and made the sons of Israel drink it. What is the meaning of this? Remember that these are symbolic acts, dramatizing God’s message to the people. I will try to be as delicate and sensitive as I can be here, but the idea is that the people ingest the deity they have worshiped, and it enters their digestive system to become what it truly is – defiled waste. This is yet another instance of biblical sarcasm, but without any sense of humor at all. The idol becomes what it truly is – excrement. You could carry that metaphor further by recalling that the idol was in the form of a bull, but the point is already sufficiently made. God gave these people gold to provide for their needs, and they proceeded to worship the gold. In Philippians 3, when Paul is describing the things in which he boasted and gloried in before he came to know the Lord Jesus by faith, he says that he has counted them as nothing but rubbish – but rubbish is not really the Greek word he uses. The Greek word is skubalon, and it means the same thing as we are describing here. It is – for lack of a better word – excrement. If you want to see something you love come to nothing but waste, just elevate it above the Lord in your devotion and affection. He will not allow it to stand and will bring it to nothing, and less than nothing.

Then, not only does the idol become what it truly is (and we have said enough about that), but remember the Psalmist said that we become like what we worship. If we worship the Lord Jesus in Spirit and in truth, we will become more like Him. But if we worship an idol, we will become like that idol. And this idol has been destroyed and made waste. And so it will become of those who worship it. In verse 10, the Lord tells Moses, “let Me alone that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.” And we see this carried out, at least in part, in the latter portion of the text where 3,000 men were slain by the swords of their own kinsmen. This was a severe judgment, but we must confess two things: (1) it was not as severe as it could have been; and (2) the egregiousness of idolatry deserves nothing less than severe judgment, for it ultimately is a coup against the God of heaven, who has vowed that He will not share His glory with another (Isa 42:8). The slaying of these men is a minute depiction of the horrors of judgment that all who refuse to surrender to the sovereign authority and saving grace of the One True God. Jesus Himself said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28).

If idolatry brings upon itself such swift and severe destruction in the deserved judgment of God, and if we are all inclined to such idolatry, we may wonder what hope we have to escape the justice of God’s wrath? And on this subject the text is not silent. So we move finally to …

III. The rescue from idolatry (vv11-14; 25-26; 30-35)

Reading any portion of God’s law has an effect on us. If the effect that it has on you is to say, like the Rich Young Ruler said to Jesus, “All these things I have kept from my youth” (Lk 18:21), then you’ve missed the point. Remember that First John tells us, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. … If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and His word is not in us” (1:8, 10). The intended effect that the Law is supposed to have on us is threefold. First, it should humble us, because it shows us that we are not as good as we think we are. Second, it should silence us, because it shows us that we have nothing of which to boast before God. Third, it shows us that we are hopeless before God in and of ourselves, so if we would have hope before God, it must come from someone else intervening on our behalf. We need a mediator!

It should not escape our notice that in God’s private dialogue with Moses in verses 7-14, God states that He intends to destroy Israel and start all over in making a great nation from Moses, instead of from Abraham as He had promised (v10). Now, certainly because God is God, He can do whatever He wants to do without any of our permission. But, because God is God, one thing He can never do is contradict Himself by acting against His own nature or invalidating any of His promises. So, when He said this to Moses, it was something of a test of Moses’ faith and dedication to the Lord. It would be awfully tempting would it not? I think that something along these lines is what goes through the heads of many church planters. In their frustration with the churches where God has placed them, they begin to think, “You know, I wouldn’t have all these issues if I just start all over from scratch and do things the way I want them.” In their efforts to produce a perfect church, they fail because the very first member of the new church – the planter himself – is just as sinful at the core of his heart than anyone in his former church was. And it was true for Moses. If God were to start all over with Moses, the new nation would be just as flawed as this one was, because Moses was no more perfect than Abraham was.

So, Moses rises to the test and demonstrates a surprising degree of spiritual perception. This is exactly what the Lord expected from the test. Moses becomes an intercessor for his people. He prays that the Lord will not destroy Israel and start all over with him, as tempting as it may be, on three counts. In verse 11, he appeals to God on the basis of God’s purpose. He says, in essence, “You brought these people up from Egypt for a purpose that has not yet been fulfilled! Don’t go back on that now!” Second, in verse 12, he appeals to God on the basis of God’s nature. He says, essentially, “The Egyptians will think dishonorable thoughts about You, and claim that You are an evil deity if You do this thing.” Thirdly, he appeals to God in verse 13 on the basis of God’s promise, saying, “Remember the promise You swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants!” And verse 14 says that the Lord “changed His mind.” Don’t get carried away by that into thinking that God is unpredictable and capricious. This is an instance of what is called anthropopathism – speaking of God as though He had human feelings. It is a way of putting God’s truth on the bottom shelf for our easy grasp. Suffice to say, God had intended this to be a test of Moses, and Moses passed the test by rising up as an intermediary for the people before God.

As the intermediary between the people and God, Moses has the responsibility to represent God to them and them to God. He represented the people, first, by interceding for them. But then in verses 25-29, He had to represent the Lord before the people. We have already noted how this included the swift and severe act of judgment by which 3,000 men were slain by the swords of their kinsmen. And we have already noted that, though swift and severe judgment was certainly appropriate, it was not as bad as it could have been. Three-thousand men is a lot of men. But, when we compare this to the total number of people in the exodus generation, we realize that it is but a small percentage. Exodus 12:37 tells us that 600,000 men were part of this entourage. So we are talking about 0.005 percent, or 5 of every thousand. The text certainly implies that far more than this were involved in the idolatry, does it not? So, why was the judgment not more far reaching? The simple answer is set forth in the text. In addition to representing God before the people in severe judgment, Moses also represented God before the people in saving mercy. In every threat of God’s judgment, there is an offer for repentance and redemption. We see it in verse 26 – before the order for the slaughter is given – Moses says, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me!” Notice, the offer is given, in spite of what you’ve done yesterday, in spite of what role you played in the ordeal – if, now, today, at this moment, you want to side with the Lord and Him alone, “come to me!” And those who did were spared.

And finally, we see Moses as the intercessor that the people needed in verses 30-35. He said to the people, “You yourselves have committed a great sin; and now I am going up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” That’s what we need: atonement. It is to make peace with God by removing the sin that separates us from Him and securing His favor in the place of the judgment that is deserved. Moses said, “Perhaps I can do that for you.” And so he went to the Lord, confessing on behalf of the people: “Alas, this people has committed a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for themselves.” He confessed it as forthrightly as he could, without minimizing or glossing over it. “But now,” he pleaded, “if You will, forgive their sin.” He is seeking this on behalf of the people, not himself. He was with the Lord on the mountain. It wasn’t his sin, it was theirs. But in the greatest act of intercession that Moses ever performed, he said to the Lord, “and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written.” That “book” is the register of God’s own people, those who have life in Him, abundant and eternal. And Moses says, “I am willing for You to treat me as though I don’t belong there, so that You may treat them as though they do.”

God’s answer to Moses is a somewhat surprising, “No.” He says, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book.” In other words, He says to Moses, I cannot blot you out in exchange for them. You have sins of your own that must be dealt with, so you cannot sacrifice yourself in their place. I must have a perfect sacrifice to be a substitute for others, and you are not it!”

Aren’t you glad your ultimate and eternal hopes don’t hang on Moses? Aren’t you glad that it’s not all hanging in the balance of a well-intentioned “perhaps”? No, instead, God has given us a greater Mediator. When we were cut off from God by our sins, standing in the line of fire of a well-deserved eternal judgment, the Lord Jesus Christ came to be for us what Moses never could. What Moses shows us here is just a foretaste of the more perfect Intercessor who would say to the Father on our behalf, “Do not destroy them, for the sake of Your name and Your glory and Your promise. No, instead, treat Me as they deserve, and treat them as I deserve.” And because the sinless Son of God offered His perfect self as our substitute, God the Father was pleased to atone for our sins in the blood of His cross, where He took the penalty of all our sin, and offers us His perfect righteousness in exchange. And so with arms outstretched on the cross, the Lord Jesus is able to say to us all, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to Me!” Doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Doesn’t matter where you’ve been. Doesn’t matter what or who you have worshiped before now. The Lord Jesus offers you atonement and redemption if you will turn from sin and come to Him by faith. What the Law could not do, and what Moses could not do, Jesus Christ has done for all who trust in Him. He can rescue you from all idolatry and immorality if you will come to Him.