Marco Ambriz

February 23, 2025

Icebreaker: What kind of rules do you find silly or perplexing?

Exodus 32:1–6: The Golden Calf

1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 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.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.” 6 They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

32:1 WHEN THE PEOPLE SAW THAT MOSES DELAYED TO COME DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN. Until now, Moses was with, and available to, his people every day since the exodus began. But having been gone for 40 days, the people doubted. If the primary spokesperson, representative, and leader of a movement disappeared indefinitely, is it surprising that the people doubted the purpose or value of the movement? (Stuart, 661) What movement do you feel God directing you to? And how do maintain courage in the face of delays or difficulties?

32:1 WHO SHALL GO BEFORE US. Moses was the Israelites’ sole contact with Yahweh and was the mediator of Yahweh’s power and guidance, and, for all the people knew, he might be dead. With him gone, they figured that contact with Yahweh was lost and that they, therefore, needed a replacement mediator to serve the role of “going before them” (Matthews, Ex 32:1). What helps you feel assured that you're heading in the right direction toward God?

32:1 COME, MAKE GODS FOR US. Just a few months before, the Israelites were still living in Egypt, deeply influenced by its pagan culture, just as they had been for hundreds of years. They had all grown up in a society devoted to pagan deities, and they were understandably, though by no means excusably, not yet used Yhwh's rigorous commands against idolatry (Stuart, 661). What aspects of your culture deeply influence you and your circle? 

32:1 THE PEOPLE GATHERED AROUND AARON. The nuance of the Hebrew word "gather" is that the people gathered in hostility against Aaron to pressure him into helping them return to idolatry. This does not excuse Aaron, who should have been willing to resist such pressure but who instead caved in to it. Yet it does tell us that Aaron may have acted partly out of fear for his own popularity/wellbeing/acceptance or the like (Stuart, 662).

32:1 WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAS BECOME OF HIM. The people are not just genuinely confused, but also lacked faith at the same time. Had they been willing to trust God fully, they would have been willing to wait as long as necessary for Moses to return. But their assumptions got the best of them: it looked like Moses might not return at all. The people had manna and water, so they were not panicked for food. They merely wanted to get on with their journey and not stay in the wilderness of Sinai forever, a place where they had recently suffered an unprovoked attack by Amalekites. They needed, in their opinion, guidance, protection, and divine power backing them in their conquest of the promised land. They needed, they thought, real, tangible gods (Stuart, 664). What kinds of things do you reach for in your pursuit of safety, security, and comfort?

32:2 THE GOLD RINGS THAT ARE ON THE EARS OF YOUR WIVES, YOUR SONS, AND YOUR DAUGHTER. The Israelites had not left Egypt empty-handed. As the instructions for the tabernacle indicate, Israel had brought out gold, silver, fine incense and spices, and fine fabrics. This wealth was part of God’s plan, however, and was the result of a promise made by God (Ex 3:21–22) (Coleman, 135). What provisions and resources has God blessed you with, to steward over?

32:3 SO ALL THE PEOPLE. The Hebrew phrase here does not imply that every single Israelite had agreed to the idolatry. Hebrew kōl is often used to connote “all sorts of” as well as “every last one of,” and there may have been many people, especially Levites who resisted the folly that Aaron and others had gotten into (Stuart, 664–665). Can you choose to be one of the people who resist the idolatry happening around you?

32:4 AN IMAGE OF A CALF. The calf symbol was well known in the Canaanite context of the second millennium and represented fertility and strength (Matthews, Ex 32:2–4).

Representation of young bulls used to symbolize the god’s presence in the worship place. The bull was used to represent many gods in the ancient Near East, particularly Amon-Re in Egypt and El and Baal in Canaan. Thus the sin here is not worshiping the wrong god but worshiping the true God in the wrong way through images (Brand, 255). How might Christians be worshiping the true God in the wrong way nowadays?

32:5 HE BUILT AN ALTAR BEFORE IT. Aaron attempted to salvage the worship of Yhwh by associating the idolatrous version squarely with Yhwh, building an altar in front of the calf, and declaring a “festival” (worship-feast day) to Yahweh for the following day. Building an altar in front of a god/idol conformed to the expected positioning of sacrifices in idolatry; it guaranteed that the god would see the offerings made to him and accept them. By contrast, the orthodox biblical positioning of the altar in the courtyard of the tabernacle, and later temple, so that there was no direct line of sight from the ark in the holy of holies to the altar because of the curtain/veil hiding the ark was actually a positioning that required Israelites to have the faith to understand that the one true God actually saw what they did for him without having his idol right behind and facing the altar on which they did it (Stuart, 666). Do you trust that God sees what you do for him?

32:5 A FESTIVAL TO THE LORD. Although the Israelites did not consciously reject ‘the LORD’ as their God, their attempt to portray him as a golden calf was a major breach of the covenant stipulations which they had earlier accepted (Alexander, 116). Can you think of some examples of Christians claiming that they are worshiping the Lord, but, in reality, they are worshiping an idol of their own making?

32:6 ROSE UP TO REVEL. Just as the worship of Yahweh had been corrupted by introducing an image to represent him, so it was also corrupted in the conduct of the Israelites in worship. Their coarse and excessive carousing was a typical feature of pagan fertility festivals (Matthews, Ex 32:5–6).

Distrust is Sin

What reasons did Israel have to believe that God knew what he was doing? 

Ironically, at that very moment, everything was going according to God’s plan. He was giving Moses instructions on how to build the tabernacle so that Israel could meet with God. When the time was right, God would lead them out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land. God had not abandoned them at all; he was busy preparing for their flourishing. But rather than waiting on God or trusting their God-given leader, the Israelites decided to take matters into their own hands (Ryken, 977).

And this is how sin happens. We fall into sin when we fail to trust that God knows what he’s doing and try to work things out on our own. Instead of waiting for God to do something according to his own time frame, we try to speed things up. By setting the agenda, what we are really trying to do is wrest control from God, when what we ought to do instead is wait for him to work (Ryken, 977).

The trouble is that like the Israelites, we are often tempted to be impatient. We get impatient for God to heal us or provide for our needs. We get impatient for him to bring spiritual change, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. We get impatient for him to lead us out of the wilderness. But sometimes, for our own benefit, God doesn’t want to bring us out of the wilderness. Not yet anyway. And if the wilderness is where God wants us right now, that’s where we need to stay, trusting in his goodness and waiting for his timing (Ryken, 977). Confess to God the ways in which your impatience manifests in your behavior.

Sermon Points

1. Our love for God and our neighbor is tested by our self-made distortions of who God is.

2. The people made the one true God, YHWH, into a convenient form that they could produce and manipulate to their own interests. 

3. Idolatry isn’t only worshiping another God. It’s also distorting our God into our own image and worshiping that image instead of God.

   • The golden calf of the United States of America is White Supremacy, and the golden calf of the Evangelical Church is White Christian Nationalism..

Reflection

1. What "golden calves" -- supposed objects of power -- are we tempted to worship today?

2. Do you need healing from a legalistic view of God’s commandments?

3. Where are you prone to make God into your own image?

4. Where do you hear God’s loving invitation to healthy boundaries and integrity in your life?

Works Cited

T. Desmond Alexander, “Exodus,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994.

Chad Brand et al., eds., “Calves, Golden,” in Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003.

Lyman Coleman. Life Connections Study Bible. Nashville, TN: Holman Bibles, 2019. 

Victor Harold Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, and John H. Walton. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000.

Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes. Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005).

Douglas K. Stuart. Exodus, vol. 2, The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006.

Andrew L. Whitehead. American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church. Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing, 2023.