40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 102 (Exodus 32:7-20)

Episode Date: November 10, 2017

Before Moses smashes the 10 commandments and makes the people drink their idol, he has a strange discussion with God. Can you change God's mind? How do we appeal to God? How is Moses not only a type of the Law but also a type of Christ? Chad and Daniel are talking about all of those things in this episode. Check it out! 

welcome to another episode of 40 minutes in the old testament i'm daniel emery price joined by chad bird chad how's it going man it's good it's good i slept in this morning for once unexpectedly oh yeah so yeah i feel like i'm like three quarters awake instead of like 100% awake today so uh we'll see if my mind is fully fully engaged i don't know what happened but i must have pressed snooze too many times so the coffee's still percolating through the system So you woke up at like 4.15 or something? Yeah, 5.45. Yeah, it was late.

You got to be aware of that sloth, man. Yeah, I know. So I'm just going to let you take care of the show today. I'm going to sit back here and maybe throw in a few comments. Okay. All right. Well, that's it. That's it for the show, guys.

Thanks for listening. Thanks. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Oh, man. No, this is like some, we're coming up on some super, super rich material here. So I'm going to have to jump in. I'm sure we both have lots to say about what's coming up here. We're going to see if God changed his mind. How's that? Okay. Oh, I like that. I like starting with the question that we're going to answer. It's good. Does God change his mind? I mean, does prayer make any difference? And then what's this about like Moses smashing into pieces the two tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments on them?

All right. Well, let's get rolling. So if you joined us last time, you know that we are with the foot of Mount Sinai and things have gone downhill fast. this is exodus 32 everything was just fantastic for the first uh first few chapters leading up to this i mean moses is right there with god on top of mount sinai he's hearing about how to make the tabernacle and the altar and all this stuff that's going to form part of the worship life of israel i mean down to the down to like that the width and the height of all these things so everything is just is flowing along smoothly for 40 days while Moses is up on the mountain and then we get to chapter 32 and uh we we fall into uh idolatry and rebellion and all sorts of all sorts

of sinful nastiness taking place here so what happens as as I'm sure you're aware especially if you listen to last episode is the people approach Aaron and they demand that he that they make him a god so he does we'll see today how he explains that decision to moses that's pretty pretty humorous anyway he makes his golden calf uh he sets up an altar in front of it and he makes this announcement he says tomorrow should be a feast not to the golden calf but he says tomorrow shall be a feast to the lord to yahweh so aaron is walking this tightrope this theological tightrope On the one hand, he's saying this is all about Yahweh, but on the other hand, he just made a forbidden image under which Yahweh is supposed to be worshipped or that's understood to be the pedestal for Yahweh or something like that. Well, God isn't buying it, as we're about to hear, because God understands this to be nothing more than rank idolatry.

So we left the people having a great time. it says they uh the next day uh this day of the feast to yahweh they they got up early they didn't sleep in like i did they got up early they offered all these sacrifices they had a sacred barbecue and then they rose up to play whatever whatever play means but they're having a good time they are uh enjoying themselves in the foot of mount sinai and then we're picking up here verse seven at the top of mount sinai things things are not going so well so let me uh let me read verses seven through ten and uh let's see what god has to say about the situation it says then the lord spoke to moses go down at once for your people whom you have brought up

from the land of egypt have corrupted themselves they quickly turned aside from the way which i commanded them. They made for themselves a molten calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, this is your God or Israel who brought you up from the land of Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, I've seen this people and behold, they are an obstinate people or a stiff-necked people. so leave me alone that my anger may burn against them and that i may destroy them and i will make of you a great nation so that's what uh that's what god says says to moses uh at the end of at the end of this 40 days a very uh uh a very different form of speech than what he's been hearing up to this point. Now, the first thing, and maybe you noticed this because

I accentuated it, but the very first thing to notice here is that when God begins speaking to Moses, he doesn't say, my people. He says, go down at once for your people whom you brought up from land of egypt have corrupted themselves so it's as if god is uh is separating himself from the people he's he's uh he's saying to he's saying to moses look these are your people and you brought them up from the land of egypt and now look what look what they've done the people have corrupted themselves so much that god doesn't even want to claim them as as his own instead he's uh he's identifying them as as bound to moses instead of instead of bound to himself and then he goes on to describe of course what they've done and he mentions no words here he doesn't say hey you

know they they they had good intentions in their heart or something like that he says no they they turn aside from the commandments they make themselves this calf and they worship it a sacrifice to it and they claim that this is the god that brought them up out of the land of egypt and then he describes them with this uh it's really a it's an image from uh from the animal world so like if you had a theater farmer and you got this ox that you that you're supposed to use to plow your your field but this ox is like very stubborn he doesn't want to go the way that you want him to go uh he always wants to turn left when you want him to turn right or he tries to go right when you want him to go left and anyway he's just obstinate what he's described this this

ox would be described as stiff-necked and that's the the image that god uses to apply to israel i've seen this people and behold they are a stiff-necked people so i tell them to do this and they do that i tell them to do that and they do this they don't walk in a way that that i want them that i want them to go and then this is really the the kicker here verse 10 is my is my favorite is my favorite verse not because it's uh full of you know goodness and light but just just because well i explain in a minute here's what i love about verse 10 so it says god says Now then, leave me alone, that my anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them, and I will make of you, talking to Moses, you a great nation. And what I like about that is because this first phrase, now then leave me alone, is God's way of opening the door to change, just to crack, so that Moses can push that door open and step through it and do what he's about to do.

So Moses hasn't said anything up to this point. It's just been entirely God talking. God telling him what's happening at the foot of the mountain. God telling him how his people have rebelled. God telling Moses how he's just ready to destroy them and basically to start over with Moses. But then he says, leave me alone. Now, the very fact that God tells Moses this tells us something. Because, I mean, God could simply have wiped out everybody at the foot of the mountain, just completely obliterated them.

But he doesn't. Instead, he tells Moses what's going on. He describes the activity of the rebellion. And then he tells Moses, hey, now just leave me alone. that my anger may burn against them, which is God's way of saying, don't leave me alone. Implicitly, we have here an invitation for Moses to step into the gap between God and the rebellious people and to do what needs to be done, which is the work of intercession, which is what we're what we're going to get to next moses is actually pretty legit here i mean there's there's a lot of times where and i think right rightfully so uh but we'll like contrast jesus and moses right or we'll

say um you know jesus is no second moses because moses is affiliated with the law and that's i mean paul affiliates him with the law jesus affiliates him with the law and we do that in the church as well and i don't think there's anything wrong with that um but uh but there are it is easy to forget when you do that that there's there are many times where moses is also uh absolutely a picture of christ as well i mean the idea of him being the one that like takes them out of israel into the you know leads into the promised land um lets other other people go into the promised land and he dies and does it. I mean, there's all kinds of things that are very Christ-like about Moses as well.

And in this situation, if Moses was strictly a man of the law, his response to this is like, hey, I'll shut up. Do what you got to do. Yeah, he'd have been like, go get him. Sounds good to me. Like, you're right. These people have been a pain and both are next. Let's do that.

I like that plan. but he doesn't yeah so you see Moses definitely has some compassion for these people and I mean he's gotta be you know he's

we're gonna see it but he's not as though he's happy about it no yeah he's in fact we'll see this in verse 10 it says that my uh my anger may burn against him uh farther down in the chapter those same hebrew words

about anger burning are used to describe the reaction of moses to the people so yeah i mean it's not like he's just kind of shrugging his shoulders and like yeah you know people will be people you know sinners will be sinners no he's he uh he's lit himself he's angry so uh yeah it It doesn't take a neutral stance toward the People's Rebellion. No, no. You know, this is totally off-topic, but there's a key and peel sketch. I don't know if our listeners know who that is.

I'm sure some of them do. There's a guy who's a substitute teacher, and he's messing up everyone's name. So he's pronouncing all their names like super urban. so he's pronouncing denise denise and blake balake but there's there's one there's a guy there named uh named aaron and he called and he's calling him aaron and he's getting all upset because the guy says that he's like it's pronounced aaron and he has this freak out moment where he's like you done messed up aaron i love that i love that video it's it's yeah you should look it up

it's it's super funny well i i saw this meme just this week of uh it's a picture of aaron standing next to the golden calf and then that scene from the thing from that from that skit where it says you done messed up hey ron uh it's perfect that's perfect i feel like i feel like that is moses that he's not he's not like well you know aaron is gonna you know he's gonna be aaron no i definitely think he's uh he's done messed up aaron he's done messed up aaron yeah yeah i uh well we'll get to it in a minute but uh that happens to be i think uh the funniest verse in the bible when moses and aaron have their discussion but we'll get to that we'll get to that in a minute i mean in the midst of all of this and this is a terrible mess we got

divine anger and threat of annihilation and moses is going to be breaking the the tablets and pieces in a minute all this stuff going on and then we have this short dialogue between moses and aaron that just cracks me up every time i read it so anyway you get a little uh little uh humor mixed in there all right so uh uh god has has uh invited moses to enter into this door of an session. So that's what happens. Picking up with verse 11 and going through 14. So Moses begins to speak to God. God says, leave me alone. And Moses is like, nope, nope, I'm not going to. I'm not going to stand here and be silent and let you annihilate these people. And let me tell you why. so i mean he's he's uh i i love this i love the way that moses approaches god here because

this is like we have that verse in hebrews about like approaching the throne of god with boldness and confidence well this is boldness and confidence i mean this is like i don't think we've seen anything like this since uh when when abraham tried to save sodom and gomorrah uh we haven't seen anything that's where somebody steps up to the plate and they look God right in the face and they say, we need to talk about this. What about this? What about that? So this is a model of some very bold, audacious praying. So he starts out, he says, Lord, why does your anger burn against your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand. So first of all, he's almost like politely corrected God here. Above, God said, go down at

once for your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have corrupt themselves. And then Moses twitches, turns things around. He says, why are you angry against your people whom you brought up for the land of Egypt. So he's reminding God of what he's done and who he is and that these people who have corrupt themselves are indeed the people of God. But then he's not done. He's got, he's still got a lot farther to go. So verse 12, he's worried about God's reputation, basically. He says, why should the Egyptians say that it was with evil intent that God brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth. So he says, turn from your burning anger and change your mind about doing harm to your people. So he's worried about

what the Egyptians are going to say about God, because God's reputation, God's name are sacred. And in fact, what was one of the purposes of God bringing Israel out of the land of Egypt? He says so that they might know, so that the Egyptians might know that God was the one who saved his people. Well, if God destroys them now in the mountains, then what kind of message is that going to send to the Egyptians? So he says that, but he's still not done because verse 13, Moses goes on to talk about the promises that God has made. So he's going to remind God about his promises to the patriarchs. He says, remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by yourself. And you said to them, I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens and all this land of which I have spoken, I will give to your descendants and they shall inherit it forever.

So Moses is saying, look, you can't start over with me. You've made a promise to the patriarchs that it will be their descendants that you give this land to. They are your people. You chose them. You love them. You set your mercies upon them. So this is not the time to wipe out everybody and then start again with me. And after all this, this very, very in-your-face kind of prayer with boldness and honesty and candor and passion, God doesn't turn around and smite Moses. He doesn't get angry at him. In fact, just the opposite. God actually hears and answers exactly what Moses requested. So we have this verse 14 summing it up. It said,

So the Lord changed his mind about the harm, or literally the evil, which he said he would do to his people. You know, one of the things I love about this text, I wrote an article a while back comparing this text with the text you referenced with Abraham. And what you see is like two sort of pillars of the Old Testament going to God on behalf of some wicked people. uh and abraham gets it wrong and moses gets it right because the mistake that that abraham makes is he appeals to the righteousness of the people in sodom and gomorrah and so he does this plays this game with god where it's you know hey there's you know there's 20 if there's 10 if there's five this kind of thing uh and and he says and god's like yeah all right you know if there's five righteous people there the problem is there's no righteous people there they're all sinners

i think that if moses had taken it all the way down to one and had that righteous person be god uh he might have been successful um it's almost as though moses is is recalling this and knows that appealing to the goodness of the people or any goodness in the people that god is threatening to destroy does not get you the result you want like he's already he already knows that abraham already tried this move and it doesn't work uh so what moses does that abraham didn't do is he doesn't even isn't bring up anything good about the people he doesn't try to he doesn't try to say like well you know that you know they there's some goodness in there there's a cut you know what about there's some yeah sure six good people though yeah surely there's some people that

aren't participating like he doesn't do any of that instead he appeals not to the righteousness or the goodness of Israel, but appeals to the righteousness and goodness and promises and the reputation of God. So the tragic end of appealing to man's righteousness is utter destruction, and the glorious end of appealing to God's righteousness is mercy and forgiveness.

And there's something to be learned there, I think, as we obviously we approach God it's never good never bother approaching God appealing to your righteousness or somebody else's righteousness

appeal to his because that's the only righteousness there is and the result is much better and I'm about to change my whole prayer life now I mean I've been approaching God saying hey God since I've been so good and kept your commandments

so perfectly. Would you give me these three things I'm asking for? Yeah. I mean, dude, even like, I think that maybe practically the temptation of how this would work is maybe you get cancer and then I go to God and I'm like

praying for, so I'm praying for Chad because he's got cancer and I don't want that. So I'm going to God and I'm like, God, like you know chad's a really good guy and uh you know he's he's doing a lot of good work and he's uh so you know you should you should you should heal him for all those reasons i mean he's a good

he's a good husband he's a good father he's a good writer he's a good friend like you should you should heal him for the no no like that's not that's not how you do it instead you're like i know chad's the chief of sinners but in your in your mercy and in your grace please restore him that's how all the we see like the people uh that jesus heals or restores in the new testament it's always like that man they don't come rolling up like well uh you know i'm lame but let me tell you how let me tell you how i came to this you know uh or let me tell you like how how good i've been in my lameness uh no they're they're just like have mercy on a son of david and bam yeah the ones that are rejected are those who approach god based on their own confidence right their own

righteousness absolutely yeah they're the ones who are turned away i think that's a i love the example that you gave because i i think that is is a is a real temptation when we're praying for someone i mean we we look at someone we say you know that person's doing a lot of good or they've done a lot of good for me they're really nice they have a they have a family they need to take care of and they're doing a good job so on the basis of that on the basis of what a what a good guy he is and what a good gal she is then please heal them or save them or whatever it might be that's completely the wrong direction instead uh that that's the abraham approach which didn't work out so well. And the Moses approach is different. It puts everything right back in God's

lap. Listen, you are righteous. Your name is holy. You don't want that to be desecrated. You've made promises to these people, promises that you swore to keep. What I love about this story, God's appeal to Moses to pray to him is implicit, but Moses catches onto it and jumps right in there and does exactly what God wanted him to do all along. The New Testament, somewhat parallel to this, is when the woman, the Syrophoenician woman, comes to Jesus, and she, you know, she wants him to heal her daughter, and Jesus ignores her first, then he insults her, you know, he calls her a dog, but then she latches on to that, because that is Jesus's way of leaving the door cracked just a little bit and she pushes it all the way open by saying

yeah uh i agree with you but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table and we have the same response of jesus there that we do of jesus here at exodus 32 in both cases he answers he answers the prayer yeah yeah god actually uh some people maybe not want to do this i actually strongly encourage trapping god with his own words uh because that's where you he he intends you to do that uh so you know you see this a lot in the souls absolutely yeah so like you you uh you you demand that god prove he's not a liar uh this is god wants to be trapped uh cornered by his own promises rod rosenblatt one time he answered this question awesome and It was different than I had ever heard it.

And I think that the answer that I would have given before this is probably okay too, but I liked his better. He's like, if I was asked at the gate of heaven, why should I let you in? What would the answer be? And I've always thought like, well, you know, it would be because of Christ. Which is good, you know, that's true. And that's probably a fine answer. Christ is always a good answer.

But his answer was different. he said if i was asked by god why should i let you in i would say because you promised yeah exactly that's that's that's trapping god with his words you made the promise because you said so and you swore you said so you swore to keep your promises and so i'm i'm holding you to that keep your promises yeah uh i remember who said this but uh i thought it was a good line that what god has promised unconditionally we can ask of him unconditionally right you know we don't we don't say uh uh please please love me god if you want to or please forgive me if you want to or please give me more hope or more faith or more love if you want to well there is no if to it all

these things god has promised unconditionally so we uh we can ask him unconditionally which is which is what Moses does here. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, just holding God to the promises that he's made, and we see what happens here. I don't try and jump into the mind of God, understand what it means for him to change his mind. I mean, was this already planned ahead of time, or God knows everything, so he knew this was going to happen. I leave all those things aside, And I think I just, I stick with exactly the way the story goes. It says here, God changes mind about the evil, which he said that he would do. So does prayer change God's mind?

Well, yeah, at least from our perspective, from the perspective of the story of the scriptures, it does. I don't really get into all the minute theological wrangling of his divine foreknowledge and all that kind of stuff. Because I would rather just stick with the plain evidence of the biblical narrative itself, which says that when you pray and ask God for something, then he will answer it. And if you want to call that changing his mind, that's fine. That's what it says that he does here. Yeah, I think that the easiest way to explain that sort of thing is just that what God knows is everything. How that works out linearly in time and space is another thing. And you don't need to go into too much more detail than that.

But it's sort of like Jesus is God, knows that he's going to go to the cross, and in a particular moment asks God if there's another way. how do you reconcile those things well what one's happening and one is something that god knows and the other is happening in time and space and that's it deal with the deal with the tension yeah yeah yeah deal with the tension that's the best you could do so uh the main point uh is that is it when uh when when moses approaches god with god's own words with god's own name with god's own reputation with god's own promises then god respects that he can do no other because he is god he does not lie he does not go back on his word so he doesn't obliterate israel thankfully

and then we transition to what happens next now we've had this uh divine human conversation here where moses in a very christ-like way steps into the breach and intercedes for israel and now he's going to go down and he's going to talk to Israel himself. So Moses turns and he goes down the mountain and he's got in his hand the two tablets of stone. And it says that they were written on both sides and that these were God's work and the writing was God's writing. So you have this picture of God chiseling these 10 commandments into the two tablets of stone. So God himself is responsible for these words not just in an inspirational sort of way but he actually wrote them god's finger inscribed these on the on the tablets of stone and moses is carrying them so

he's got the law in his hands and he's and he's marching down the mountain now he about halfway down we're assuming he meets up with joshua because joshua accompanied him up part of the mountain i guess he's just been hanging out waiting for moses to to finish finish up his 40 day sojourn so he gets together with joshua and joshua hears this sound and he says uh he says to moses that sounds like there's war going on in the camp i kind of like this because joshua is is actually right in a way because it's a war against god his word that's going on down there there is a battle going on but it's not the kind of battle that he thinks is happening so they were they were evidently pretty loud i mean they were having a good time they rose up to play

so they were they were getting after it in whatever kind of whatever kind of idolatrous worship in which they were engaged but moses says no no it's not the sound of the cry of triumph nor it's the sound of the cry of defeat uh it's the sound of singing i hear because of course moses already knows what's happening and then we get here to verse 19 so uh it as it came about when they came near the camp that Moses now sees with his eyes what he had heard with his ears.

He sees the calf and he sees the dancing. And Moses' anger burned. That's that phrase that I said was used earlier of God in verse 10. Moses' anger burned. And he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered

them at the foot of the mountain. And he takes the calf which they had made, he burns it with fire he grinds it to powder and he scatters it over the surface of some water and he makes the sons of Israel drink it

so I'm going to turn it over to you Dan because you have something to say about this I think that when he grinds that calf into powder throws it in the water and then makes them drink it that's just that's incredible

that's incredible or that's one of those verses you're reading you're like wait what he did what like like it's not like god there's nothing in the narrative that says that god told him to do that like you're just like this is just moses being a freak man like yeah he's like what really weird thing can i do oh oh you want you want an idol huh how you like your idol now like that's yeah how's that idol taste. That is just crazy stuff right there. So I love that. But one of the things that I love about this portion of scripture is Moses, you know, once he actually sees what's going on, you know, him throwing down the Ten Commandments and breaking them. My favorite thing that Spurgeon

ever said uh is in reference to this text and he says that when moses holds the law of god in his hands he breaks it uh we should not assume to do any better and uh and so there is this like awesome scene where where god like gives moses the ten commandments he gives him the law he goes down and witnesses that law just being absolutely destroyed and then literally break like breaks the law which is going to result in him having to go back and this is just all like god showing us like how this is going to work how the law is actually going to function he has to go back to god and have him redo it like i mean that conversation yeah just imagine it like so uh so i went down there yeah i went down there turns out you were right like it was

bad it was real bad and uh yeah i broke the law you mean like you literally broke the law yeah not not like like yes of course i'm a sinner i'm a break so like you have this this actual objective representation of how the law is going to be kept, which is not at all, by Moses just throwing the thing down

and it's shattering, which of course is what happens with the law, that we receive it and we break it. Yeah, the minute it ends up at our hands it ends up at our feet, shattered into a million pieces. Yeah, and this is what happens when you're like, I'm going to carry this law.

Carry it right down from the mountain down to the people. No, you're not going to do that. No, it's going to be broken every time. It really is. It's the perfect image for the Christian life, if you will, because it doesn't matter if you're Moses standing there with the law in your hands or if you're the people dancing and singing around the golden calf, either way, the law of God ends up broken at your feet every single time. And so God gives it to you again, and it breaks again,

and hands it to you again, and you break it again. I do wonder if when he went back up there and said, yeah, I broke the law, but so you know, I ground that calf in the powder and made those guys drink it. I made up for it Before I came back up here though I took care of that idolatrous problem They won't be doing that again

Yeah If only, right? Yeah I don't know if that was Moses' plan This will stick in their memory This will be the end of this These will just be straight up Yahweh worshippers through and through

From this point on But that's not exactly how this plays out yeah little does moses realize that this is only the beginning of uh of the rebellions that israel is going to be going to be engaged in i mean we'll see over and over it doesn't matter whether it's idolatry or uh getting a little bit too cozy with the pagan neighbors or rebelling against moses or against moses and aaron which they do uh lots of times i mean even to the point where they're ready to to stone them uh this is this is only the beginning of their of their law breaking i mean that and that's just that's a picture of israel in the old in the old testament it's a

picture of the church the new israel and the new testament that's a picture of us of us today and there there is no victorious christian life there is no movement within a person's life to where they more and more get to be a righteous keeper of the law and perfect the way of holiness and just get better and better and better and less and less unrighteous. And how we maintain this simultaneous position of saint and sinner, of saved, as well as those who are seemingly intent on self-destruction by our sinful choices. so we're always if we look down our feet there's always the the shattered remnants of the two tablets of stone down there but we also always stand at the foot of the cross upon which christ

not only paid for our breaking of the law but then gives to us his righteous keeping of the law so that god looks upon us as those who actually are perfect and righteous because we're covered by the uh the wholeness of of his son yeah and uh as uh as the law continues to come down idolaters though we be that there there is there stands christ mediating on our behalf um as a ever interceding right as it were and uh for for the sake of god's righteousness and god's promises and god's mercy uh not based on how well we're keeping those ten commandments uh we are we're in a position because of what christ has done and be and through his mediation that we are recipients of of forgiveness and uh and mercy and that's it man we gotta leave it

there that's a that's a decent note that's a decent note to end it on hey guys i don't know if you know this but uh if any of you guys are living in the north dakota area if you're living over in uh i don't know montana north dakota canada wherever you're somewhere wherever's close to there don't know never been there but uh but i'm gonna be there with chad and uh and a couple of other people uh we're doing a chrysle fast city event in a place that isn't really a city but it's a place uh where there's people so we got to go there and we're gonna be uh talking about the psalms and so uh this is gonna take place may 19th and if you want more information you go to chryslefast.org uh go over to the events page and we're gonna be doing that city event if

you're in that area or just want to come out to that area and hang out with us we'd love to see you chad we will see you next week all right man see you then thanks