The Sound of Screeching Tires
This morning we’re going to start with a screeching stop.
And there’s a sound I want us to get in our heads. To help with that, think back to any Looney Tunes cartoon you’ve ever seen.
In those cartoons, when the characters are in motion — think of someone like the Road Runner — when he’s in motion, when he’s running, and comes to a sudden stop, can you think of the sound that’s made?
It’s the sound of screeching tires. [Do y’all know what I’m talking about? Can you call this sound to mind?] This is actually one of the most common sounds in any cartoon (Scooby Doo does it all the time); it’s used as a way to embellish a character’s movement. The character is in motion, they’re running along, and then when they stop there’s sound of screeching tires.
I want you to think of that sound and hold that sound in your head, okay?
Now look down at Exodus 32, and play that sound.
Moses has been up on Mount Sinai since Chapter 24. From Chapters 25–31 God has been giving him the instructions for the Tabernacle, and then here in Chapter 32, while Moses is still up on the mountain, the camera turns to the people down below the mountain, and it is a screeching tire sound.
The whole narrative gets interrupted by a hard stop, and that’s what we’re going to look at today — with the sound of screeching tires in our heads. There are two main parts we need to see:
First, there is the reality of sinful people;
second, there is the reputation of a holy God.
That’s the simple outline for this sermon: the people’s reality; God’s reputation. [hands]
Let’s pray:
Father in heaven, in this moment, with your Word open before us, by the power of your Holy Spirit, speak to us, please, in Jesus’s name, amen.
The Reality of Sinful People
And I’m calling this the reality of “sinful people” because the sin of Israel in this chapter is about more than just Israel. Exodus 32 is the fall story of a nation in the same way that Genesis 3 is the fall story of humanity. In this chapter there are connections all throughout that go back to Genesis 3 — in the same way that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and fell, Israel disobeyed God and fell — and in the same way we can learn about ourselves in Genesis 3, we can learn about ourselves in Exodus 32.
This chapter is meant to prove to us the faithlessness of Israel. It’s meant to be a reality-check for how incapable they are in themselves to trust God. And when we read about them, we see ourselves.
And what’s especially fascinating here is that we don’t just read an account of their sin, but we get to see what God thinks about it. Verses 1–6 show us Israel’s sin, but then in verses 7–10, God himself comments on their sin, and that’s going to be our main focus.
So here’s how to set this up: The first thing to do is to just walk through verses 1–6 and see as plainly as we can what’s going on. And then after that, we’re going to look closer at verses 7–10 for the divine interpretation of what’s going on.
First, Verses 1–6
God is still speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, but meanwhile off the mountain, verse 1, the people realize that it’s been awhile since they’ve seen Moses, so they “gathered themselves together to Aaron.” And that little preposition matters: are they gathering themselves to Aaron, or are they gathering against Aaron? What’s the nature of this gathering?
Well, the same expression for this kind of gathering is used three other times in this section of the Old Testament and in each of those uses the meaning of the gathering is hostile (see Num. 16:3, 42; 20:2). They’re not coming around Aaron for fun and fellowship; but this is more like a mob shaking their fists. They’re making a demand: “Get up and make us gods …”
And so Aaron tells them to compile all their gold, and he fashions it together to make a golden calf. And then they said of the calf: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” Then in verse 5 Aaron builds an altar, and says that tomorrow they will have a feast to Yahweh, and so, in verse 6, on the next day the people wake up, make burnt offerings, and have a slosh fest.
Already, there is enough here for us to know that things have gone sideways. This is a terrible situation. But now let’s look at verses 7–10.
Now, Verses 7–10
A lot of what we read here is repeated from verses 1–6, but, again, verses 7–10 is said from God’s perspective. This is God’s commentary on Israel’s sin, and there are at least three things we learn here about the sin of sinful people in general.
#1 - Sin of impatience
Look at verse 7. Yahweh tells Moses to leave the mountain and return to Israel because they have corrupted themselves. Okay, how did they do that?
Verse 8, God says: They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them.
Now verse 8 gives us God’s insight on verse 1 when the people saw that Moses “delayed” to come down from the mountain. We know from back in Chapter 24 that Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights — well how long is 40 days?
What makes 40 days a delay?
It all depends, right? Are we talking about 40 days for a goldfish, or 40 days for a dog? Is this 40 days of a do-it-yourself kitchen remodel or 40 days of waiting in line for a coffee?
Delays are all relative, right? And when it comes to our waiting for things, our expectations for how long certain things should take is formed by our experience and by what we’ve observed in those around us. We know 40 days in line for coffee is too long. But 40 days for your own kitchen remodel, that’s pretty good. Our experience and observation informs us.
And so how does that work for Israel?
When was the last time they were rescued by God’s mighty hand after 400 years of slavery? Had they ever heard before of an entire nation crossing the Rea Sea on dry ground, eating bread from heaven, and drinking water from a rock? Had they ever seen a mountain before that was filled with the glory of God like a consuming fire?
No, they’d never seen that. This was the first time the universe had seen any of these things, and yet … Israel wants to know in Chapter 32 what’s taking Moses so long. In their minds, somehow, Moses is delayed. But from God’s perspective, Israel has turned aside quickly.
Do you see the irony in this? From God’s perspective — which is the only perspective that really matters — he’s not even finished giving Moses the law and the people have already broken it.
Moses has been on the mountain away from the people for just 40 days and they have already cancelled him, which is why they want Aaron to make the image. It’s because they decided that Moses was not coming back.
Apparently there was some point along the way when they figured they knew better than God, and that their timing was the standard. And so what they’re trying to do here is to hold God to their standard. That is the sin of impatience.
Now by impatience, I don’t mean eagerness or anticipation or any kind of faith-filled longing for something good. That’s not what I mean. The sin of impatience is when we try to hold God to our timing standard rather than trust him. That’s what Israel is doing here, and it’s consistent with their grumbling from earlier chapters, but now it’s worse. This is a screeching tire sound.
#2 - Sin of idolatry
This is where we’re gonna look closer at what Israel actually did. There is the temporal aspect of how quickly they turned aside from God’s commandments, but then how exactly did they turn aside? That’s also in verse 8. Look at the second sentence in verse 8. God says:
They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
That’s the fact of what Israel has done. It’s what we read about in verses 1–6. It is the sin of idolatry, which is a direct violation of the second commandment. Listen to the second commandment, Exodus 20, verse 4:
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Right along with the Sabbath commandment (#4), the second commandment is the longest of the ten commandments, most likely because the narrative anticipated that this would be the first commandment broken. That’s also why this commandment is repeated three more times before we get to Exodus 32 (see Exodus 20:23; 23:13, 32–33). Idolatry was Israel’s big temptation — and they gave in right away. They didn’t even borrow this idol from other nations, but they made it for themselves. Verse 8, God says, “They have made for themselves a golden calf…”
And notice again back in verse 1 that their decision to make the golden calf was in response to the absence of Moses. This is important. It tells us a little more about how idolatry works. Look back at the last part of verse 1:
Up, make us gods 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.
Now the word “gods” in the Old Testament is often used to refer to idols. In the Hebrew it’s the word elohim, which can either be translated as plural or singular — sometimes it’s “gods” (plural) and sometimes it’s “God” (singular). The context determines which it should be, and sometimes it can just go either way, and that’s the situation here. Our English translation says “gods” (plural), but I think it should be god (singular), and here’s why:
First, and I think the most obvious reason, is that the people wanted Aaron to make a little-g god (or an idol) and Aaron fashioned a golden calf (singular). He made one calf, one idol, because that’s what they were asking for.
But also second, the people wanted to make this little-g god, this idol, as a replacement for Moses. They wanted to make a god, an idol, because Moses — the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt — has disappeared.
See, with Moses out of the picture, the people needed to replace hi, and the reason for this, in short, is because Israel was faithless.
Remember the role that Moses has filled. Moses was the representative of God to the people. Back in Exodus 19–20, the people were too afraid to answer God’s call to fellowship: God called them up the mountain but they didn’t come; instead they stood far off and they said to Moses, Exodus 20, verse 19: “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”
See, they wanted Moses to be like God to them, because they were too afraid, too faithless, to have God himself. And so Moses took that role, but now Moses is gone.
And with Moses gone, does that mean they have to face Yahweh themselves?
Because the mountain is still smoking. They can see it, and they’re still afraid. They still don’t have faith. They still need somebody or something in the middle; they need something to “shield” them from God himself; they gotta replace Moses.
Let’s make a new Moses. An idol. A golden calf. And let’s say that this calf did what Moses did. This calf is the in-between who brought us out of Egypt.
Do you see what they’re doing?
Another clue that this is about replacing Moses is that in verse 5 the people hold a feast to Yahweh — so they’re still worshiping Yahweh. They’re not trying to replace Yahweh, they’re trying to replace Moses — which means they don’t want to abandon God, they just want to control him.
Hello, meet idolatry. This is what idolatry is: it’s not the wholesale forsaking of God, but it’s trying to control God; it’s God on our terms; God in our way. We’re too afraid to have God himself, because he’s too dangerous and too demanding, and so we fashion together and chisel out all these intermediaries to represent him; because we want God to look modern and manageable; we want God to appear as something we can handle, something that makes us less dependent and less accountable.
If you have a golden calf, you can live however you want, because you know a golden calf ain’t gonna stop you.
This is faithlessness. It’s unbelief. And it’s not just an Israel problem, it’s a sinful human problem. It’s a problem in this room. We’re not trying to abandon God, we’re just trying to control him. That is the sin of idolatry. It’s sound of screeching tires.
Which leads to, #3, the sin of syncretism
#3 - Sin of syncretism
Syncretism is the blending together of multiple things to make a new thing, and it’s always the next step in idolatry, because once you are in control you have to enact some kind of system, and the easiest way to do that is to just borrow from what you already know.
In verse 9, speaking about Israel, Yahweh said to Moses: “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.”
And that word for stiff-necked is a great word because it’s an image. The word means to be stubborn, to be set in a certain way, to have a stiff-neck. We get what that means. Israel is stuck in their sinful ways, and how this plays out is that they revert to the ways of Egypt. That’s what they’re used to.
This is why they made a calf. Why not an eagle or a bear or hamster? Why a calf?
Well, it’s because of Egypt.
It’s commonly recognized among Bible scholars and historians that in ancient Egypt, the way Egyptians represented their highest deity was through the image of a young bull. Over the years, archaeologists have recovered several statues of young bulls in Egypt. In fact, just a couple years ago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art hosted an exhibit called “Egypt’s Sunken Cities” and one of the prized pieces of that exhibit was an ancient bull statue. Currently, right now, you could go to the Cleveland Museum of Art, at “Location 107 Egyptian”, and you would see another bull statute that’s been recovered. They were everywhere in ancient Egypt.
And so Israel, when they wanted to replace Moses, they just copied what they had seen for the past four centuries. They had seen the Egyptians bow down to a calf, so they thought: Hey, Moses is gone, let’s just do the calf thing. They were stiff-necked. They were stuck in their ways. Rather than give total allegiance to Yahweh, they wanted to do a little mixture. …
We’re gonna feast and make offerings to Yahweh, but we’re gonna do it like Egyptians. In fact, how much like the Egyptians can we be and it still count as the worship of Yahweh?
Do you understand the question? Because sometimes we ask it, too:
How much of our world can we sprinkle in here and this still count as Christian?
How many of the world’s values can we share before we cross the line and become something other than a Christian church?
Look, that question itself is syncretism. It is a non-Christian question — because it’s not driven by faithfulness to God, but by accommodation to culture. It’s when we look at the world and we don’t want to be marked by our differences; but we want be accepted by our similarities.
God help us! This is a problem today just like it was a problem for Israel. It is the sound of screeching tires.
The sin of impatience, idolatry, and syncretism. Israel has fallen. Now what?
That is the question in this chapter, and in the entire biblical storyline. Now that Israel has done this, what will God do?
The Reputation of a Holy God
In verse 9, God tells Moses, Look, I have seen this people. That means he’s fully aware of who they are. They’re stiff-necked. They’re incapable of being faithful to his covenant. So he knows this marriage is not going to work and he’s ready to back out before the wedding and start all over. That’s verse 10. Yahweh says to Moses,
Now therefore [because they’re stiff-necked, because they will be terrible covenant-keepers] let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.
Now look how Moses replies in verse 11. He simply implores God not to do this:
O Yahweh, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?… [look at end of verse 12:] Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.
Moses is not asking God to ignore the sin of the people here; he’s not asking God to try again and make a new covenant; he’s simply begging God not to destroy Israel — and he begs for this not on the basis on God’s mercy, but on the basis of God’s reputation.
Look at the text here, verses 12–13. If God were to destroy Israel, it would make two big suggestions about who God is. The first suggestion is that God is evil; the second suggestion is that God is a liar.
Is God Evil?
Look at verse 12. If God were to destroy Israel, verse 12:
Why should the Egyptians say, “With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth”?
Remember Egypt has seen what Yahweh did for Israel. Back in Chapter 14, after Israel had crossed the Red Sea and the Egyptian forces were in a panic, they said, “Yahweh fights for Israel” (Exod. 14:25). They knew this was Yahweh, and that he had saved Israel with massive power and a mighty hand. They knew Yahweh was great, but is he good?
Moses is concerned that if God wipes out all of these people he just set free, the Egyptians will call this whole rescue operation evil. And Moses is probably speaking as much for himself here as for the Egyptians. Because Moses is still getting to know Yahweh too.
There is more Moses will see in the next two chapters, but he’s apparently seen enough by now to know that God is committed to the accurate revelation of who he is, and that evil intent is not part of it. And it’s on that basis that Moses prays: God, please don’t do this! To destroy the entire nation of Israel would send the wrong message about who you are. You are not evil.
Is He a Liar?
Moses gives a second reason why Yahweh should relent from destroying Israel. Look at verse 13.
Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’
This is straightforward: If God destroys Israel here it means that he would not do what he said he’d do, and that would make him a liar, and Moses knows Yahweh is not a liar. So Moses just reminds him: Remember what you said! Remember your promise to Abraham!
This is a significant moment because it makes clear to us that any forthcoming relationship God has with Israel is not because of who they are, but it’s all because of who he is. There is no illusion here that Israel deserves God, or that anyone deserves God — at any point God could have ended the whole thing. So they knew he was a promise-maker, but is he a promise-keeper?
Moses knows he is. And Moses knows that God is committed to the accurate revelation of himself. God is unswervingly committed to display and uphold the glory of his name. God cares about his reputation; he cares about his glory; and so Moses appeals to that. God, please don’t destroy Israel. To destroy the entire nation of Israel would send the wrong message about who you are. You are not a liar.
Do you see it?
Yahweh is not evil, he is good. Yahweh is not a liar, he is a promise-keeper.
That is what Moses is saying. That is his confidence. Moses is not appealing to Yahweh’s mercy, but to his reputation. Moses appeals to Yahweh’s glory, and then in the next two chapters he learns that Yahweh’s glory is his mercy.
As for Exodus 32, this is the sound of screeching tires. If we keep reading here we’ll see that God hears Moses and he does relent from destroying all of people, but he does bring a reckoning. The effects of sin have still tarnished everything:
The people have committed spiritual adultery and they drink the dirty water to symbolize their unfaithfulness;
they have “broken loose” in the camp, which is a phrase that gets at their shame, similar to Adam and Eve after their fall;
Aaron is held accountable although he shifts the blame just like Adam and Eve did; and
then the Levites step up like the cherubim of Eden to execute judgment.
God does not sweep Israel’s sin under the rug, but he will visit it upon them.
We’re talking about the reputation of a holy God … a holy God who dwells in unapproachable light and blinding moral purity. No sin gets a pass. None of Israel’s. None of yours. The judgment of God will come for you … or, it already has.
Do we know the importance of the cross of Jesus Christ?
Romans 3 tell us that we, as sinful people — impatient, idolaters, syncretists — we as sinful people can be made righteous by God’s grace, as a gift, through the cross of Jesus Christ. God put Jesus forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This means that instead of God’s judgment visiting you, it visited Jesus. God’s wrath burned hot against your sin, but Jesus took that punishment in your place, if you would just trust him.
I want to invite you to do that this morning. If you’re here and you’ve never put your faith in Jesus, trust him right now. Call out to him for salvation. If you ask him to save you, he will save you.
And for those of you who he has saved, let’s give him thanks. That’s what this Table is about.
The Table
We come to this Table each week to remember the death of Jesus in our place. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we say, Jesus, thank you! I receive you! I belong wholly to you, forever.
