Exodus 32:1-6

Transcript

00:00:00:10 – 00:00:06:55
Clint Loveall
Thanks for being with us. Welcome back. I can call this fun. Michael, Maybe not.

00:00:07:15 – 00:00:08:42
Michael Gewecke
It’s interesting to study.

00:00:09:01 – 00:00:30:28
Clint Loveall
I, I think we get to a place today for a breath of fresh air. That’s maybe not a good way to refer to this story either. We we’ve been through. We’ve been through a kind of slog, an exodus. And I think we get to a story that has a lot of depth, has a lot of interest, has a lot of history.

00:00:30:48 – 00:00:50:34
Clint Loveall
As we move into chapter 32 and we get the story that is familiar to many people. The Golden Calf. It’s one of those stories, Michael I think we grew up in a church. We’ve been in church. We know this story. And yet I often feel that each time I revisit it, there’s something in it that I often think I missed last time.

00:00:50:34 – 00:01:13:37
Clint Loveall
And so it’s just one of those stories that I think is is a pretty deep well. And even people who know the story might be surprised to realize there were parts of it they didn’t know. Let’s jump in. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and they said to him, Come and make God for us.

00:01:14:02 – 00:01:41:20
Clint Loveall
Who shall go before us for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt. We do not know what has become of him. I’ll stop there. Not very far in Michael, but we have this picture that’s been painted. Moses has been having this conversation with God, getting the tablets and the people in the in the absence of Moses have gotten restless.

00:01:41:40 – 00:02:07:12
Clint Loveall
This has been a pretty clear picture of the people so far in this book. But they say we do not know what’s happened to them. And they go to Aaron Moses, second in command and very, very upfront, very blunt. Make gods for us, make make articles for us, make sacred objects for us because we do not know what has happened to Moses.

00:02:07:57 – 00:02:27:25
Clint Loveall
The Book of Exodus here, Michael is taking no pains to hide the idolatry here. Right. This is it’s woven into the second verse of the story. Come make gods for us who shall go before us. And that really sets the tone here.

00:02:27:46 – 00:02:45:01
Michael Gewecke
So let’s just make sure we’re all on the same page here in case you weren’t with us yesterday. Well, I make note of this is the end of verse of chapter 31. You know, God speaks with Moses, gives him the two tablets. And Clint, as you made a point to really emphasize yesterday, it was written with the finger of God.

00:02:45:06 – 00:03:14:29
Michael Gewecke
Okay, So just previous to this story, God is physically inscribing upon stone handing to Moses. This is what’s going to come to the people. And the contrast to today is not accidental. I just, you know, the writers of scripture, the tellers of this story, the ones who have given us this text and whom we see ourselves and then whom we learn the extent to which our salvation is needed.

00:03:14:43 – 00:03:36:34
Michael Gewecke
We see that God is encountering Moses on this mountain. And in that restlessness that you just described, the people ultimately show up and they they call not only for a graven image of the God who brought them out of Egypt, which by the way, we’ve had over and over again references to that God being faithful, that God providing the very food that they’ve had in the wilderness, that God.

00:03:36:45 – 00:03:59:49
Michael Gewecke
It’s not as if the going through the red sees the only miracle that’s happened. Let’s be clear. So over and over and over again, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has been faithful to the people right now that very God is inscribing with his own finger upon this tablet, so that the presence of God, that the actual action of God in the midst of the lives of the people that’s happening right.

00:03:59:49 – 00:04:29:54
Michael Gewecke
And then simultaneously, these people are asking not just for images of that God, they are asking for images of God’s plural. And lowercase g. I mean, the movement here is almost at extreme. I mean, it’s almost in the Greek sense, a tragedy, because this whole story has been predicated upon the fact that God has been faithful, given the covenant, brought the people through all these things, even told the people, this is how you should live.

00:04:30:08 – 00:04:48:10
Michael Gewecke
Moses goes up. It’s like you go out, Hey, I’m going to go pick up supper when you come home. The family’s moved on. Right. It’s just an extreme transformation. That’s happened. And the thing that’s so unsettling about it, I think, is not only that do they come to Aaron, but it’s Aaron’s response to it that’s unnerving.

00:04:48:32 – 00:05:08:09
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and keep keep this line in mind here. This man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, that becomes important here in a couple of verses. But let’s get back into the story. At verse two, Aaron said to them, Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me.

00:05:08:33 – 00:05:35:07
Clint Loveall
So all the people took off the gold from their ears and brought them to Aaron, and he took the gold from them, formed it in a mold and cast an image of a calf. Yeah. Let’s stop there. Michael So this story, obviously, throughout the centuries has gotten a lot of attention, a lot of interpretation, a lot of people try to see different things in it.

00:05:35:25 – 00:06:00:19
Clint Loveall
The role of Aaron is interesting. We’ll see in a minute. It would be easy to to cast Aaron in a very negative light here and and we probably should to some extent. But there is there is a little more to the story. It’s just hard to know what’s going through. Aaron’s head here, Aaron, is a very interesting character the way this story comes out.

00:06:00:32 – 00:06:20:24
Clint Loveall
But he tells the people here, give me your gold. He takes that gold and he, with the mold, forms a cast, now again formed it in a mold. That’s important because we’re going to see that’s not how Aaron’s going to remember it. In a moment, we’re going to see a little bit of disconnect in the story. And he cast the image of a calf.

00:06:20:43 – 00:06:43:21
Clint Loveall
And if you’ve ever read this story and you think, why would you choose a calf, it helps you to know that, again, we are dealing with essentially moving toward the land of Canaan. And in that land among many of the people groups, the calf is a sacred object. The calf is the sign of many of the pagan gods.

00:06:43:42 – 00:07:10:08
Clint Loveall
It has to do with fertility. If it’s a bull, the idea of strength, it has to do with fertility rights and fertility blessings, with the land and with people. So it may seem strange to us who live in a place where we, you know, we drive by and see cattle and go, why would anyone but but this is religious imagery.

00:07:10:12 – 00:07:37:26
Clint Loveall
The calf is not a random idol here. It is specifically borrowing from the religious symbolism of other people. And that makes it idolatry, essentially times two. Not only are they substituting a thing, but they’re doing so by borrowing the religious symbols from other faiths, from other people. And I think it helps to understand.

00:07:37:26 – 00:08:05:04
Michael Gewecke
That I agree completely. And in fact, let’s take you to another level. Some people might know that there was actually an active worshiping cult, a religious faith, a subset in Egypt that also worshiped the truth. So it’s interesting how you note that the people who are called here to take off their gold rings from their ears are likely taking off the gold that they gleaned from Egypt on their way out.

00:08:05:22 – 00:08:36:01
Michael Gewecke
And I think that’s the fascinating intersection that Exodus lives on this book, because it’s a story of the people leaving. Right. They leave Egypt along with all of its own sacred rituals and its own sort of religious and authoritarian power structures that they leave Egypt. They’re, as you say, clean, they’re on their way somewhere. They’re going towards the promised land, which has all of these other people, some of whom, by the way, if you might remember now always in the rearview mirror, we’ve already had conflict with some of that.

00:08:36:01 – 00:09:02:04
Michael Gewecke
So, like, they’re literally people at this crux moment. They’re leaving a thing and they’re going towards a thing. They take the stuff that they took with them from Egypt and they fashion out of it an idol which shares this religious sort of connotation from both the place that they went and the place where they’re going. And they have the gall to present it as the God who carried them out.

00:09:02:04 – 00:09:30:57
Michael Gewecke
It I mean, we could probably repeat this for the thousand times in the course of this short study, and we still wouldn’t be able to overemphasize the amount of just just sheer collapse happening here in terms of this covenant with God. Because remember, the second commandment, thou shalt not have any other gods before me, and we’re breaking that commandment without any great I mean, it’s just blatant.

00:09:30:57 – 00:09:34:57
Michael Gewecke
And so it’s incredible how quickly this story turns clean.

00:09:35:09 – 00:10:01:04
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And you really get a sense of that as we move through this next part of the verse and the people said, These are your gods. Oh, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt? So there are three things here that are offensive just in terms of the story. These are your gods. So clearly that one make sense to us, right?

00:10:01:04 – 00:10:40:13
Clint Loveall
That they now look at this golden calf and they say, this is our God. All Israel. Well, God named them Israel. Their very name is a reflection of the one they’re supposed to serve. So they have it. Not only have they chased an idol, they have forfeited their identity. They’ve lost who they are. These are your gods. So Israel, to use the sacred name or the holy name of the people and do that in reference to this golden calf is stunning.

00:10:40:28 – 00:11:05:22
Clint Loveall
And then finally, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt? This may be the most offensive part of the sentence that they now attribute to the golden calf, the very gold they wore and the name of the nation God has given them. And they say this is the one you know, they asked earlier who Moses was, the one who brought us out of Egypt.

00:11:05:29 – 00:11:37:35
Clint Loveall
Now they’ve changed. They said, well, then these gods, this golden calf, this God, and when they say this God, they may mean the golden calf, or they may mean the other gods of the other people who the golden calf represents. And so it’s not exactly clear what they’re claiming here, except that they’re clearly now giving credit to their freedom In a book called Exodus for the People of Israel to foreign gods or to idols or to both.

00:11:37:35 – 00:11:50:58
Clint Loveall
And that’s a stunning statement. You could read that and not understand how deeply troubling and how deeply sinful, misguided wrong it is.

00:11:50:58 – 00:12:11:07
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I was just watching a video the other day of someone who was just filming and suddenly there was an eruption. And you can just see sort of the smoke and the violent force that that’s the kind of movement happening in this story. And the gall of it is obvious on its surface. And so maybe that’s where it’s easy to get hung up.

00:12:11:27 – 00:12:42:52
Michael Gewecke
But I think if you dig a little bit deeper, as I think you were instructive in doing it, we we see here that every part of the story that’s been laid before this is being overturned in an instant. I mean, just every moment of God’s faithfulness, all of the times where God has showed up and provided for the people every time that he has given them what they need for the next day, our daily bread, you know, the people have been satiated.

00:12:42:52 – 00:13:27:07
Michael Gewecke
But this story illuminates all the rest. Now, how many times have we said, just wait for it or we know what’s coming? This has a way of helping us see the story that’s gone previous, too, to see that at every point where God is provided, even if the people for a moment were quiet, it’s, I think, a fair reading of Exodus at this point to realize that they had been harboring substate and shall doubt that the times that they’ve been complaining has not just been I don’t like the flavor of the food that it’s been a deep seeded heart turned kind of complaining against God, because really this kind of disruption in this story when

00:13:27:07 – 00:13:50:18
Michael Gewecke
you look earlier, has been slow li being set up. I mean, yes, it’s surprising on one hand because we just got the covenant, the Ten Commandments, this beautiful thing. On the other hand, if we’re honest, are we really surprised, I mean, that these people have come to this place and this has been the response. I think that that’s the nuance of a story like this, is it recognizes how large of a deal this is.

00:13:50:33 – 00:13:53:29
Michael Gewecke
And also, yeah, it was there the whole time.

00:13:53:51 – 00:14:20:52
Clint Loveall
Right. Not quite inevitable, but maybe also not surprising, you know, the benefit of an idol is you make it in your own image. You it tells you what you want to hear. Yeah. I mean, idols are safe. They’re attractive. They’re very different than a relationship with this living God who has been fire and pillar and moved among them and given them commands and consecrate teach them and etc..

00:14:21:28 – 00:14:57:32
Clint Loveall
We as we try to get done here. When Aaron saw this verse five, when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it and Aaron made a proclamation and said, Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord. And this is a confusing verse and it’s it’s been a tough one to interpret through the years because it you can read this to think that maybe Aaron saw what was happening and thought it went too far and he and he says tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord and he specifically uses the divine name here.

00:14:57:32 – 00:15:23:52
Clint Loveall
When you see the all capitals Lord, that is the word Yahweh, that is the divine name. And so he clearly has in mind the God of Israel, except notice that before that it says He built an altar before it and it is the golden calf. And so it’s some have suggested that maybe Aaron is trying to rein the people back to some extent.

00:15:24:50 – 00:15:57:12
Clint Loveall
You know, I don’t know. It’s hard it’s hard to know that. I think maybe that would be more obvious if, in fact, the Bible was trying to tell us that at the very least, there’s confusion here. There’s mixing of of deities, of gods. There’s a kind of looseness that God is not going to be happy with. And I think by and large, we’ll see at the end of the story that Aaron retains a lot of responsibility and gets a lot of blame.

00:15:57:12 – 00:16:04:33
Clint Loveall
And so if in fact, he’s trying to get the train on a different track here, it’s a hard case to make.

00:16:05:33 – 00:16:28:28
Michael Gewecke
That’d be nice. You know, there’s a level in which it would be nice to try to read that into the text. But I think when you see the divine name listed here explicitly, when they’re building an altar before, which is very clear in all of the Old Testament texts to come, the building altars to anything that is not to God is is absolutely reprehensible.

00:16:28:28 – 00:16:46:51
Michael Gewecke
I mean that the story before and after is going to condemn this moment. I think what’s notable, though, is that when you start talking about the deep things of faith, it is easy to get turned around. And I think there is compassion in the middle of that, because if I was going to be the most generous, I could read this story.

00:16:46:51 – 00:17:09:14
Michael Gewecke
Not saying others haven’t read it more generously, but I think maybe the way that I would interpret this towards Aaron’s benefit would be, you know, maybe he conceived of that as a physical image that represented the divine Lord. You know, I mean, maybe you could make a case that in the best spirit possible, he thought, Hey, it’s hard to follow a being we don’t see.

00:17:09:27 – 00:17:16:04
Michael Gewecke
So this is the God who carry this out. It’s not the real God, you know. But yeah, man, you’re reading a lot into it to get there.

00:17:16:04 – 00:17:35:43
Clint Loveall
And you have to put an asterisk on this knowing what he’s going to say later. So there’ll be a time when we revisit some of Aaron’s words that will connect to this. And knowing what he’s going to try and come up with later makes it very difficult to think that he’s taking responsible bility.

00:17:35:54 – 00:18:14:24
Michael Gewecke
I mean, you’re stuck with your hand in the cookie jar. But the problem is that we just literally had a whole excursion on why you shouldn’t have your hands in the air. I mean that the writer of Exodus has made it so that this story follows the stories that lay out God’s plan. And immediately upon the conclusion of that, we get a story where the people just on explainable b unjustifiably rupture the plan at a level that is just not discernible or definable.

00:18:14:24 – 00:18:35:56
Michael Gewecke
And so because of that obvious intentional inclusion, I think the most natural interpretation of this text is that the human heart is indeed sinful, that even in the face of the proclamation of God and the reminder of covenant and the call to be the people of God, our temptation is to make it about us and our comfort and what we want.

00:18:35:56 – 00:18:42:14
Michael Gewecke
And we are willing to do that even to the extent of rupturing the relationship with the God who’s called us as his own.

00:18:42:19 – 00:19:03:54
Clint Loveall
Yeah, let’s put a pin in that for now. But let’s just say that in a few paragraphs, Moses is clearly going to think Aaron should have known better. Yeah, so we’ll we’ll revisit that then. But let’s finish this. This passage here, the last verse four six. They rose early. The next day they offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being.

00:19:04:12 – 00:19:31:35
Clint Loveall
And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to rebel. So this actually sounds like a decent start. They rose early. They offered burnt offerings, although it is I think implied that they’re offering that to the calf. So now they’re using the pattern of their own religion, their own faith, the practices that they know, but they’re pointing them in the wrong direction.

00:19:32:00 – 00:20:00:03
Clint Loveall
And then, of course, at the end of the verse is very hard to get around. They rose up to revel. And revel is a is a very cleaned up version of a Hebrew word that essentially means debauchery. There’s strong sexual overtones in it. It’s a it what they what they do after the sacrifices should not be done. It’s not a it’s not a nice word.

00:20:00:03 – 00:20:09:55
Clint Loveall
It’s a it We should we should understand that nothing that happens right after that is good.

00:20:10:04 – 00:20:44:13
Michael Gewecke
But insert your previous comment, which is now, I think, even more important at the end here. Remember your point about the calf being a symbol of virility, the idea of sure, you know, which is a sexual image itself. So I just note that this is another point of very damaging data in this story. I mean, whatever extent we would like to humanize and have compassion for the people of Israel, I think the authors going out of their way to make it clear to us that this is a a real serious departure from God’s expectation.

00:20:44:15 – 00:21:10:46
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And I you know, we don’t have time to dig into this, but I would say just in broad terms, you know, we have been through a very dense section of of stuff that maybe isn’t very devotional. But but remember, throughout Exodus that when God has given instructions, it has really been with the idea of hemming the people in and providing for them fences.

00:21:11:11 – 00:21:49:06
Clint Loveall
And here their newfound religion, which is so far an idol gold and now revelry there their new found quote unquote gods give them permission for looseness, licentiousness for revelry in that sense. And, you know, I think that’s fascinating, Michael, that when maybe one of the ways to evaluate the genuineness of a faith would be does it restrict us or does it allow us to just do what we want?

00:21:49:06 – 00:22:18:19
Clint Loveall
And clearly here the people have not only created an idol for themselves, but they have used that creation and that idol to give them self permission to essentially drop all the rules and do whatever they want. And when a religion or a faith leads you toward looseness, it it is arguably not the it is arguably not the faith of the scripture.

00:22:18:19 – 00:22:36:55
Michael Gewecke
When we continue on with this, we can fleshes out more. My only comment to add to that is I think it’s worth noting, though, that while I agree with that, I do think that the conception of the boundaries is that it’s good for the people. It brings life, that it’s a fence in which the people can flourish and grow.

00:22:36:55 – 00:22:44:22
Michael Gewecke
So it’s not to say, I mean, I think a healthy faith actually makes our lives fuller and in that sense freer.

00:22:44:24 – 00:22:46:01
Clint Loveall
Well, it’s a map to who they.

00:22:46:39 – 00:22:46:54
Michael Gewecke
Right.

00:22:47:18 – 00:22:49:53
Clint Loveall
Have the possibility of being right.

00:22:50:07 – 00:23:11:06
Michael Gewecke
And so what this does is it short circuits that and it essentially gives them self permission to run away from the God who’s brought them out of Egypt. And I would just like to point out, as they fashion the images of either of the gods of Egypt and the gods of the nations ahead of them, as they do that with the very stuff they took from Egypt.

00:23:11:06 – 00:23:31:12
Michael Gewecke
I won’t make it very clear what God are they turning to because it’s not the God of Israel. It’s not it’s not the Lord. It’s their it’s turning back to the people that they’ve been carrying with them the whole time. They haven’t got out of Egypt yet. They’re still carrying Egypt in their hearts. And when push comes to shove, they start making idols.

00:23:31:12 – 00:23:39:59
Michael Gewecke
And this is just it’s not it is both theological metaphor and it’s not it’s everything simultaneously.

00:23:40:18 – 00:23:48:23
Clint Loveall
And that’s the appeal. And the allure of an idol is that it allows you to indulge the self. Yeah, you get to do what you want.

00:23:48:59 – 00:24:04:57
Michael Gewecke
All right. Well, we could keep going for a while, but it’s going to keep going. The story only gets thicker as we go. So join us tomorrow. But until then, be blessed.