Reflections on Exodus 32:7-14 ESV

            What we find in the text for our devotional this morning is a community in crisis. Moses has gone up to the mountain to meet with God, he has delayed in returning to the nation of Israel, and so Israel comes to Aaron, Moses’ brother, the vocal leader of the people, and says to him, “Make us gods who shall go before us. As for Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” The people don’t know where their leader is. God is silent in their midst. And so Aaron, as instructed, requires the gold of all those who are in the Israelite camp in order to forge a golden calf. An idol. How quickly the people have forgotten that it was not Moses who sent plague upon plague on Pharoah and his house! How suddenly have the people forgotten that it was not Moses who caused the Red Sea to recede! Was it Moses who gave them bread from heaven, or living water from the stricken rock, or who led them as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night? And yet here they venerate, even worship, their leader Moses. It was not Yahweh who delivered them, but, “Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.” (Ex. 32:1).

            So is it at all surprising, then, that God says to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you have brought out of Egypt, have corrupted themselves”? For as much as they now worship an idol of a golden calf, they also worship, in some sense, Moses. They see the awesome power of God manifest in and through the faithfulness of Moses to steward and shepherd the people of Yahweh, and attribute that glory and power in “one who is like themselves” (much like the prophet greater than Moses who is promised in Deuteronomy 18), instead of rightfully allowing these mighty acts to bring them into worshipful reverence of Yahweh. Moses then, being a type and shadow of what is to come in Christ, comes before God in His holy habitance, intercedes for the people, reminding Yahweh of His faithfulness to keep His promises to the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so brings the people to repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

            While I want to keep this at a “devotional” level, there is a piece of theology that ought to be discussed to more fully understand some logical questions that come from this text. If you wish to skip over this section to get to devotional application, the theological piece will be included in brackets to peruse or to skip over entirely.

[It is important that we speak on the “personification” of God in this text. Was God brought to anger in His wrath, that it was altogether assuaged, even “relented” from, as the text tells us, when Moses came to Him in repentance? This, then, raises another question important for consideration: does God experience emotion? To understand God in such a way leaves logical complications. Emotion, rightly understood, is a reactionary response. We feel anger when something happens to provoke such a response. We feel sad when something takes place which saddens us. That is to say, emotions are caused by something. Therefore, to say that God experiences emotions like anger, sadness, or anything of the sort, is to suggest that God is a reactionary God; if we truly teased out the implications here, a God that is reactionary is a God who is not altogether sovereign, nor omnipotent; for if He can be stirred to anger in response to the disobedience of His people, that would presume He is powerless to stop them, intercede, or simply can only react to their disobedience, instead of using even their disobedience towards an ultimate redemptive good. This is a doctrine known as “divine aseity”: simply meaning, God acts in a way that is entirely independent of any other being. His ways are independent of our ways; they are not directly caused by our ways. His thoughts are independent of our thoughts; they are not directly caused by our thoughts. He is not dependent on any particular thing: for His existence, His acting, His will. Therefore, God is impassible - because emotions are inherently dependent on a cause, God does not experience emotion.

Was God angry? No. Yet our tendency is often to read into wrath the emotion of anger. Such an understanding can be helpful for us, for our human emotional reaction of anger is often a response to tragedy or wrong that is itself outside of what God has willed. In that sense, anger is the emotional microcosm experienced by human beings, made in God’s image, by which we may in part understand God in His wrath against injustice, evil, and sinful disobedience.

But theologically, it can also be harmful. How often have we wilted beneath Satan’s lies telling us God is angry or sad at us because of actions we’ve committed? Because of ways in which we have sinned? God is not defined by emotion, but as spirit, infinite, eternal, unchanging, everlasting, and faithful. He is faithful in keeping His promises to us, often and even in spite of ourselves. A God who is an emotional creature, acting and reacting to everything we say, think, or do, is not a God who can grant us stable assurance of our salvation bound together within His word, and, frankly, is not a God who is worthy of our worship.

This should, then, open the door wide for our understanding of what it means for the Living God to love us. It is not love as we often interpret it: an emotional depth that provokes a repeated pattern of sacrificing action. We can strike the first part of that clause. God’s love is simply sacrificing action. He does not love us as other humans do: where when we act rightly, we are rewarded with a deeper commitment and love, and when we act wrongly the grieved party is filled with sadness, betrayal, even anger at our disobedience that separates us from them. God’s love remains, even in our disobedience. Christ died for us, while we were yet sinners. While we were disobedient. A reactionary, emotional God would do no such thing. So long as we stand in Christ’s righteousness, so long as we believe in His love, so long as we stand together united in His love, so we are saved. And as we are all the more conformed to His image, as we stand to resemble Christ more day after day, so we prove that God’s love never departs from us, never leaves us, and continues to transform us. Neither God’s wrath nor God’s love come from emotion that is reactionary: one is the natural consequence of rejecting God in favor of worshipping self; the other is the natural consequence of loving God and rejecting self.

The “catch” in all of this is, of course, that God became man. So did Jesus experience emotion? In His humanity, yes. In His divinity, no. In His humanity, He shows us how to submit reactionary, emotional response beneath the will of God. He cried as He approached Lazarus’ tomb, because of the hopelessness of Mary and her entourage. Yet He knew it was better for them that He not simply heal Lazarus, but that Lazarus might be raised from the dead; had Lazarus simply been healed, Mary would have had temporary joy. Because Lazarus was raised, she had resurrection hope. One is temporary. The other is eternal. Jesus held sadness and anger together as He approached Lazarus’ tomb, yet neither compromised the divine will and mission of God.

In this age and culture of emotional response, reaction, and self-idolization, this understanding of a God who is separate from these things, yet in His incarnation becomes sympathetic to us in our weakness, is a necessary component to the gospel message.

Now that we’ve concluded this brief theological sermon, back to the devotion at hand]

Let us together consider the devotional implications of our text for today:

1.     What we see in the Israelites’ behavior is nothing new. I call this phenomenon “gospel amnesia.” That is to say, we are so blinded by sin, that we have altogether become a people of “what have you done for me lately?”. They forgot the provision of God. They forgot the faithfulness of God. They forgot the promises they swore before God at Sinai in the command that was given. And the moment the voice of God withdrew from their midst, sin clouded their minds, their hearts, their souls, and in their pride they come to Aaron and say: “we want a god, made by our own hands, to worship. We don’t want to worship a God outside of our control; we want to worship ourselves.”

How often do we also do this very thing! Where we walk in gospel amnesia; meaning, we forget the good news of the gospel, and so return to the foolishness of our former ways. Were we to record the faithfulness of God in our lives in a book, memorize it, walk with it daily in our hearts and minds, would we not be far less likely to doubt God’s mercy and goodness because we recall clear examples where those attributes of God have been made crystal clear before us? …Friends, this is the purpose of the Bible. Of Holy Scripture. It is the catalogued witness of the saints to remedy the temptation of gospel amnesia. To show God’s faithfulness not only in our individual lives, but across the span of human history! Do not be as the Israelites are; quick to forget the history of God’s redeeming work among humanity. Keep close to God’s word, and in it you will find a refuge and strength from gospel amnesia.

2.     Do you notice the language of God in the text? In the disobedience of the people, God calls them the people of Moses. “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt…” If we choose sin, we live in the consequences. And we know from Scripture the wages of sin are death. So because these people are choosing death instead of life, choosing an idol who cannot save them versus a God who can save them, Yahweh identifies them as a people empty of life; in their sin, they are no longer the people of the Living God. They have abandoned the covenant that gives life. They have chosen death. So they are no longer God’s people, but Moses’ people.

Yet Moses, being a man of faith, comes before God and prays that God forgive them of their sin. He leads the people to repentance, reminding them of the covenant they swore with God, and the covenant God swore with His people. There is power in such prayer! In standing in the assurance of God’s faithfulness. Though there is a call to repentance, Moses’ interceding prayer focuses much more entirely on God’s faithfulness to save His people. When we let the assurances of God’s promises guide us in prayer, we will find ourselves standing on that same holy ground as Moses; in the presence of the promise keeper who delights in keeping His Word and who will restore us if we will simply humble ourselves.

3.     As a final word of devotion, I believe we see here a clear word of the relation of the church to the world. Have you noticed what took place in this story? The holy man of God went to draw near to the Lord, and when he was gone the entire world fell apart in their own despair and depravity. Friends, if the church were taken altogether away from this world in the blink of an eye, is this not also what we would find in our world today? A communal rejection of God, the construction of idols, and a people who “sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” Yet when Moses comes down from that holy mountain with God’s Word in his heart and God’s will directing his steps, what happens? Revival breaks out. Those who delight in their sin receive judgment. Those who repent are ordained into God’s service. Atonement is made for their sins. And the people are no longer the people of Moses; but once more the people of Yahweh.

Jesus gives a similar word to His disciples as to the purpose and function of the church in the Sermon on the Mount. Just as Moses, the holy man, preserved the people from calamity, the church, a holy people, are meant to preserve the world from calamity and wrath. Jesus says to His disciples that they are the “salt of the earth.” In that context, Jesus is using a metaphor of traders who would take salt acquired from salt water and rub it into various meats to preserve the meat from decay. This salt is unlike our common table salt or salt preservatives; modern salt doesn’t quickly decay. The salt from the sea does.

So what happens when the salt loses its saltiness? Its preserving quality? The meat will decay and rot and perish. Friends, this is Christ’s meaning: the church is the salt of the earth. Just as the salt was applied to the meats so they would not rot and perish, Christ has applied His church to the world so that the world may not rot and perish in its sin. The church is to be about the work of calling the world out of darkness and into the marvelous light of Christ. Just as Moses called the Israelites to repent and walk in the newness of life freely given by the grace of God, so we too are called to proclaim that same message of repentance to the world: that they may come to know Jesus, and God may be glorified now and forevermore.