Ben Spence Welcome to the Love and Context Podcast of
Unscripted Conversation with Ben and Spence.
We're so glad that you could join us today, whether that's from your car, office, home,
church or wherever you're at.
If you want to contact us, you can email us at lovingcontext at gmail.com.
Also follow us on Instagram at lovingcontext.
Ben Spence Welcome to the Love and Context Podcast.
We're going to say things again and hopefully you're going to listen.
I'm Ben.
Spence I'm Spence.
Ben Spence And he has a mouthful of sweet potato fries.
So, which, I mean, let's be honest, everybody wants to record eating sweet potato fries,
right?
Spence Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Ben Spence We've got our great setup.
I mean, we got coffee, sweet potato fries.
I got my laptop set up.
I mean, we're pretty much real podcasters now.
Spence Yeah, pretty much.
We even have chewed up crayons on the floor for my dogs.
Ben Spence If it makes you feel any better.
But Tara texted me and she says, as soon as the Zoom meeting started, my son yelled, Mom,
I pooped my pants.
So, you know, parenthood for you.
Spence Yep.
Yeah, that's kind of how life goes really.
Ben Spence And I was like, Oh, no, I'm not there to help.
Oh, no.
Spence You know, that just means next time your kid poops his pants.
Ben Spence One week Tara had, she had like youth group, young life, and then like one
other thing, like three nights in a row.
Every night she left, like 15 minutes after she left, my youngest would just fill his
diaper with like, yeah.
So it was and it was it was like the difficult kind of clean.
So people listening to this, hopefully, it's parents, but you know, other people just I
mean, that's part of life.
Ben Spence See, they're going to listen to this and
be like, I thought this was about theology, not poopy diapers.
Spence Actually, this is about orthopraxia, not orthodoxy.
Oh, okay.
So it's about living.
Ben Spence And poop in your diapers.
And that's a part of living life is poop in the diaper.
Exactly.
I mean, you do it at the beginning, you do it at the end.
It's the great chiasm of life.
Right.
So it's sandwiched in between poop.
Yep, exactly.
Poop.
Yep.
It's sandwiched in poop.
Well, on that note, join us.
We are going to be talking about the golden calf today.
Ben Spence Yeah, we're going to be in largely through
Exodus 24 through the end of Exodus.
So it's good 16 chapters in there.
So just if you haven't read your Bible, or if you haven't checked out that section of
Exodus before, you should stop, pause the podcast, actually, you know, if you're driving,
don't stop.
Like you keep driving, keep driving.
Yeah, but pause the podcast, read those, because we're going to assume that you've read it
once again.
And we're going to talk about some things that happened in there.
Ben Spence And if you haven't read your Bible, and you're
on this podcast, we're glad you're here.
I would encourage you to pause the podcast and go read your Bible, though.
Ben Spence Right.
Definitely don't listen to this podcast in lieu of reading your Bible.
Yes, yes.
Ben Spence Our words do not carry the same weight as
the word of God, not by a long shot.
Spencer would agree more, except he's got a mouthful of sweet potatoes.
Spencer Only two, only two sweet potato fries.
Ben Spence All right.
So the first thing I actually want to talk about in this section here before we actually
get to the golden calf.
And I'm mentioning it this because in a few weeks, we're going to be getting into Leviticus.
And there's a story in Leviticus 10 that correlates to what's happening here in Exodus 24.
Okay.
So in Exodus 24, Moses, that God comes to talk to Moses, he says, Hey, I want you to
come up here on top of the mountain.
You Aaron, Nate, Abed and Abihu, 70 of the elders of Israel, you're going to worship
at a distance.
And Moses alone is going to approach the Lord.
And so they go up on top of this mountain, there are some sacrifices, they're there for
seven days, they see God, whatever that means.
Like there's a ton of debate about what that means.
Because we also know that other places that says you can't see God and not die, but it's
very clear that they see God.
Right.
So we don't exactly understand what that means.
There is a ton of rabbinic conversation on it, but basically say that they see the glory
of God.
And so they're there for seven days.
And then Moses is called up into the cloud and up in the cloud is actually where they're
going to talk about the 10 commandments as we called them, or last week as we talked
about them as the 10 words.
So a couple of the things that I want us to note and just pin in your brain.
And if you want to get ahead of us and go to Leviticus 10, go ahead.
But there's going to be a couple of things that are very distinctive in the story that
we should notice.
One, there is a cloud presence that there are elders, there's Moses and Aaron, Nadab
and Abihu, all named people.
And there's also going to be a period of seven days, there's going to be sacrifices, there's
going to be eating, somebody is going to go enter the presence of God.
That's really important because we're going to talk about that when we get to Leviticus.
Okay.
So just, we're putting a pin in that.
I know a ton of people, like if you're one of those people who can't wait to check it
out, go to chapter 10 of Leviticus, I believe it is, and take a look at it.
So God calls Moses up and he proceeds to give him the commandments.
And it says, when Moses went up into the mountain, this is verse 15 of chapter 24.
When Moses went up into the mountain, the cloud covered it and the glory of the Lord
settled on Mount Sinai.
For six days, the cloud covered the mountain.
And on the seventh day, the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud.
To the Israelites, the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain.
Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up at the mountain and he stayed on the mountain
for 40 days and 40 nights.
Okay.
Now, of course, we've been talking about why it's really important to understand Torah
in this conversation with Jesus, right?
Yeah.
Because immediately 40 days and 40 nights should stick out to us.
It should.
Yeah.
So not only looking forward, but where else might 40 days and 40 nights strike us looking
backwards?
I don't know.
Maybe this giant flood that happened some time ago.
Right.
You know, when Noah was sitting where it rained, sorry, Noah was sitting on the water for a
long time.
He was sitting on it.
It was made of ice.
It was cool.
Yeah.
You're like, you know, there's going to be people now who are like, there's ice in the
story of the flood?
Well, I mean, there were six months of time, so maybe it was over winter.
I don't know.
But like, you're trying to like justify your slip up here.
Yeah, I know.
Right.
But it rained for 40 days and 40 nights.
Right.
You know, and it's funny because coming into the story, one of the things we're actually
going to talk about is how God begins to tell a recreation narrative at Sinai.
Right.
I'm actually not going to spend a lot of time on this because I'm going to link in the show
notes the episode of Baymaw where Marty Solomon does a really good job of showing how there's
a recreation story going on at Sinai.
But there was a lot of and God said, and God said, and God said, and God said going through
this creation of a temple.
Right.
But one of the things that Marty mentions in that podcast, which I think is a very good
piece for us to settle on is in creation, God creates a space and he asks humanity to
fill it.
Then in the story of Sinai, God has them create a space and then he says he's going to fill
it.
Yeah.
And then we're going to see both of those realities actually intersect in the New Testament
when the new church is opened because we're both going to multiply, go forth and make
disciples and we're also going to be the temple.
We're going to be the space that the Holy Spirit dwells.
Right.
So these stories are connected and it's really important that we start seeing that.
Yeah.
And before we get too much further, we also just need to talk about there is not a lot
of time that passes between the Red Sea in this moment.
Right.
These things happen pretty closely together and we need to make sure before we get to
the golden calf that we were talking about the fact that we had the Red Sea, they went
to the desert, they had manna from heaven, water from a rock.
They had the Lord still leading them with miraculous signs.
Right.
And then they get to Sinai and they now see this mountain covered in fire.
The interesting thing about this is this actually harkens back to the burning bush because this
mountain top, we're not talking like lush mountain tops of Pacific Northwest in America
or the green hills or the green mountain tops in Alaska or some of those places.
We're not talking that.
We're talking a rock.
Maybe had some bushes, maybe had some of that on it.
So to see a top of this mountain engulfed in flame would have been a miraculous sight.
It's not something you would expect.
Right.
Yeah.
It's something that they often use, it's like thunder, thunder on a mountain.
There are really strong connections to what happens here, to what happens in the book
of Acts in chapter two.
From the day of Exodus, which would be the day after the Passover Sabbath, it was 50
days.
They celebrate the celebration of Shavuot or the festival of weeks.
It takes place 50 days later, which by the way, we're just going to go and I'm going
to just go ahead and beat this analogy into you because I think it's really important
that we start to see it.
And we're going to talk more about this next week.
Shavuot is 50 days after the Passover.
Jesus rises from the dead and then he's with them for 40 days.
And then they are in Jerusalem waiting for the presence of the Holy Spirit.
And on the celebration of Shavuot, which is 50 days later, there is thunder on a mountain,
fire descends and a temple is opened.
Luke knows exactly what he's doing.
Yep, he does.
He is drawing a very clear picture.
Like we've been skipping a stone across Exodus.
You got to understand Torah because the rest of the Bible is not going to make a lot of
sense or it's not going to necessarily connect in the way you think it should unless you
understand Torah.
So through chapters 26 to 31, God then gives a bunch of instructions on how to build a
temple, how to do sacrifices, how to build the priestly garb, like a bunch of these different
things that are going to happen.
Essentially he is helping him to build the space that God is going to dwell in and facilitate
relationship between God and Israel.
One of the reasons that we might want to mention that to a Western audience that we're not
going to think about is that God is going to teach them how to tell a story using the
methods that they understand.
Because we have this conversation very frequently, okay, we're going to talk about this in Leviticus,
so I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but why the sacrificial system?
Because the sacrificial system is something they understand.
And God is going to use the sacrificial system to tell them a different story.
And we say, okay, well, why are the laws structured like this?
Because God is going to use what they are familiar with to tell a different story.
This is the interesting thing about this.
We do this in our conversations with people all the time.
At least I don't know about you, but I do, where it's like I meet them where they're
at and I'm going to try to speak their language a little bit to tell them a story so they
can understand.
We do this all the time.
We did not invent this.
God's the author of this.
We are stealing his idea.
So what God's doing is he's saying, okay, I'm going to speak in a language you know.
Yeah, it reminds me of when in the book of Acts, Paul is touring around.
He gets to one of the Greek cities and he says, I see that you have all these gods.
You're a very religious people.
And you have this idol that's named for the unnamed God.
Let me talk to you about who that is.
He's like, I know him.
Yeah.
And in fact, Paul will frequently quote like, Cretan authors.
He'll quote like, Greek wisdom in an effort to connect with them, to explain to them the
reality of God.
It's not because Paul forgot his Jewish heritage.
No, it's because he knew the audience that he was talking to.
Paul even goes as far as to say, I'll become all things to all people so that a few may
come to know.
I think one of the reasons it's important to bring this up is because we can often go
to where we're like, okay, well, we need to speak this one language in this one tongue.
And it's like, okay, yes, we need to understand the truth of the gospel and we need to proclaim
that.
But we need to proclaim it in a way that resonates with the people around us.
Yeah.
And can we even clarify that a little bit more?
Because I think sometimes when we say truth of the gospel, I think you might think right
theology.
And while I don't disagree with that, we're actually talking about the right heart.
The heart of your intentionality is more important than your theology.
Now, don't misunderstand me.
We're not saying theology is unimportant.
You do actually need to have a firm basis and groundwork of who God is.
Yeah.
But when you read the Bible, it's to understand the heart of who God is and to fulfill his
mission in the world around us.
That is done through proper understanding, a proper base, but it's also done through
understanding the character of who God is.
Yeah.
And when you understand the heart behind something or behind someone, it changes the meaning
of everything.
Right.
Let's use our example.
We've talked about a sacrificial system.
Okay, so if you make an assumption looking at a sacrificial system that the reason God
has people sacrifice animals is because he is not a vegetarian.
Right?
He's a meditarian.
Yeah.
And he likes the smell of animals and it's meant to appease God, then you're going to
come away with the wrong message.
Sacrificial system is not about earning God's forgiveness.
If you think that we're going to dispel that very quickly in the book of Leviticus.
That is not the purpose of the sacrificial system.
The purpose of the sacrificial system is for relationship between man and God to be restored.
It is about relationship.
It is about connection and it is about fathers bringing their sons and daughters home.
Yep.
So with all that being said, now we get to the crux of the story.
I'm going to call it the pivot point.
And this is the place where people talk about Israel's failure.
And we're going to point out a lot of the things that Israel foolishly does here.
But I also want to give you pause because everything that they do that's foolishly,
I don't want you to pretend like people in the church in the modern day haven't done.
We very quickly forget about all that God has done for us.
It says that when the people saw that Moses was so long and coming down from the mountain,
they gathered around Aaron and said, come make us gods who will go before us.
As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened
to him.
Okay.
I need to pause here.
Make us gods who will go before us.
Right?
What did God say?
What's the first of the 10 words that he says?
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
You will have no other gods before me.
Yeah.
They have this conversation at the base of the mountain.
They're like, yeah, we're going to agree.
We're going to follow.
But Moses, you got to talk to God because he's scary.
Right?
Actually, funny, funny story that kind of reminds me of James.
He wanted something and I was like, I was like, okay, what do you want?
And he's like, he's like, we need to go ask them because they're scary.
I'm like, well, it's Mr. Spencer.
He's not that scary.
You know, like scary, but not that scary.
Right?
But it's like, it's very much whenever I see something like that in the Bible, I always
like think of James.
Yeah.
To give you guys an idea of how not scary I am.
I'm the one in the relationship between my wife and I and my relationship with my daughter
where Denver comes to me when she's like, oh, I want to be spoiled or I don't want to
be told no.
And then when I'm like, go talk to your mom, she's like, I don't want to.
Like that's kind of what happens.
And so like, yeah, I'm like least intimidating person in the world here.
Incidentally, we can say this with utmost confidence because I saw walking through laughing
at that statement as she went.
Yep.
So we know that it's true.
Yep.
So once again, like let's talk about timeline here.
Yeah.
So it says that Moses was in there for 40 days and 40 nights.
So somewhere in that 40 days, likely towards the end because Moses is about to come back
down, right?
They're like, okay, he's not coming back.
Forty days.
How short of a time is that given everything that they've just gone through?
It's not that long of a time.
Like we do things that we have to wait 30 to 45 days all the time.
Right.
If you have credit card debt and you pay off all that credit card debt, you have to wait
30 to 45 days before your score bumps back up.
Like it's not an instantaneous thing.
So 40 days is not a long time.
Especially given what they just seen.
Yeah.
It's not a long time.
So like you have to keep in context that they've come from the Red Sea.
The walls of water stood there for days while they crossed.
We were talking, getting hundreds of thousands of people across about a 52, 53 mile span
of water.
Right.
Like this is not a day hike.
Maybe not the way you do it.
I'll IQ any day of the week.
You will.
So this is not a day hike.
Then they get to the other side.
They get manna from heaven, water from a rock.
Egypt is defeated.
Like their god defeated the powerhouse nation of the world.
They've also seen just a mountain inflamed and like a rocky mountain inflamed, not just
like one that's covered in brush.
They've seen that inflamed and now they get to the golden calf.
Yeah.
What I actually see happening here is you read a statement where it said, come make
us gods that'll go before us.
This actually hearkens back to Egypt where Egypt had multiple gods that went before them.
They're saying, okay, this is what we know.
We've known that for a long time.
Make that happen.
Right.
And God is over here and he's like, no, I already told you put no other gods before me.
So Aaron makes them the golden calf.
If you're asking why a calf, it's Egypt's worship.
Right.
So they're actually creating the gods from where they came from, which I think is I'm
going to steal this from Marty.
And I think it's a great point.
Sometimes even when you're out of Egypt, you still have to get Egypt out of you.
That is a story that we can walk with as a church really firmly.
So God then says to Moses, it's in verse seven here, it says, the Lord said to Moses, go
down because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt have become corrupt.
They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves
an idol cast in the shape of a calf.
They have bound down to it and sacrifice to it and said, these are your gods Israel who
brought you up out of Egypt.
I have seen these people, the Lord said to Moses, and they are a stiff necked people.
Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.
Then I will make you into a great nation.
Okay.
A couple of things I want to point out here.
God is clearly trying to get Moses to engage him.
I've had this conversation with a number of people and they're like, oh, I don't think
so.
And I said, no, here's what, listen to what God actually says.
Go down because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt, right?
Moses knows it wasn't him.
Yeah, Moses knows it wasn't him.
God's made it very clear it wasn't him.
He said, I am the Lord, your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
You shall have no other gods before me.
So what is God trying to do?
He's trying to engage Moses in a conversation.
And initially he says, you need to go down because they're corrupted.
And then God has to talk a second time.
So we've talked about this before when you have to talk twice, there's nothing in between.
It means that there's a passage of time.
So God says to Moses, the go down and talk to these guys because they're corrupt.
You need to deal with it.
And Moses goes, you know, I mean, he's just, and then God says, okay, I have seen these
people and they are stiff neck people.
Now leave me alone that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.
Then I will make you into a great nation.
And Moses goes, okay, hold on.
Hold on.
Yeah.
I'm thinking a couple of things here.
One is that Moses has been having an identity crisis.
So he's like, can God even make me into a great nation?
Right?
This is me reading into a little bit, right?
But also Moses realized his call as a leader of the people to stand in the gap.
Leaders, it is our job when our church gets off track to stand in the gap between destruction
and restoration.
It is a messy place to be because you're going to deal with messy people.
And that's absolutely the call of ministry.
If you're looking to be a part of a church that is never going to have any issues, then
you're just not going to deal with any redemptive work.
No, you're not.
Redemptive work is messy.
Yeah.
And just to spell that out a little bit more for everyone.
Anyone who's experienced forgiveness and restoration knows the depth of what their sin was.
Uh huh.
Right?
To deal with that sin, you have to confess it.
You have to be vulnerable about it.
You have to bring that up and that's going to be hurtful.
That's going to be painful.
But until you do that, that sin is still going to eat away at you.
You have to bring that up to the Lord.
The idea of forgiveness and restoration is painful.
Well, have you seen that Instagram reel or that goes around where they're like singing
that song where they're like purify me by fire and the people are like, wait a second.
Wait, what are you talking about?
Yeah.
Like when we're talking about-
Hold on a second.
Yeah.
You're talking about like being like a tree and being pruned.
That's a painful process.
Yeah.
But it's good.
If you're talking about being purified by fire, I don't know about you, but last time
I stuck my hand in fire, it didn't feel so good.
Why did you stick your hand in fire?
I was a kid.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So these processes that make us more like Christ can be painful.
Right.
So we have to acknowledge that, not in our own lives, because oftentimes what I see in
my life, I'm like, okay, I can deal with that.
I'm going to confess that to the Lord.
That's great.
And then when somebody else starts to bring pain up in the church, I'm like, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa, go talk to Ben.
Right?
That's actually what he says about most things.
Go talk to Ben.
Yeah.
Go talk to Ben.
We can often hold this double standard and it's very subtle where it's like, okay, well,
I'm dealing with this on my side of things, but oh, don't you dare bring that mess my
way.
Well, if you're family, you're going to stand in the gap for each other.
Right.
So I want to credit Moses because I'm actually going to do a backwards statement on Moses
here in a second about some stuff that I don't think is really what God intended for him.
I'm going to try to specify this in a way that helps you understand my perspective here.
So Moses says, Hey God, you know, you were the one who brought them out of Egypt.
If you destroy them now, it's going to be your name that is suspect.
You are loving, you're forgiving.
If you have to take somebody out, take me out.
Right.
And God's God says, it says, then he relented and did not bring that his disaster that he
had threatened.
But then Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his
hand.
Okay.
Come down a little bit further.
He says 19, when Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, they're
probably twerking his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hand, breaking
them into pieces at the foot of the mountain.
So Moses sees what's going on and his anger burns by the way, just like God's does the
same word being used here.
And he throws the tablets, the covenant that Israel is making with God and he breaks it
to pieces at the foot of the mountain.
He takes the calf, the people had made, he burned it in the fire, which I don't understand
how you burn gold, but apparently you can.
Then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink
it.
I don't have time to unpack that for you, but there's actually a reason he does that.
Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
You know, he says to Aaron, what did you do that you led them into such great sin?
And then Aaron gives like the worst answer in the world.
He's like, ah, I just threw some stuff here and then this calf popped out, you know, but
once again, anger is burning.
He's asking questions.
Moses asked questions and Aaron answers.
And it's very similar to what Moses says, he says, do not be angry.
You know how prone these people are to evil, except unlike God, Moses doesn't relent in
his anger.
Instead, he calls the Levites.
He says, whoever is for the Lord, come to me.
And the Levites rallied to him.
Then he said, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says.
Each man strap a sword to his side, go back and forth to the camp from one end to the
other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.
The Levites did as Moses commanded and that day about 3000 of the people died.
Then Moses said, you have been set apart for the Lord today for you were against your own
sons and brothers and he has blessed you this day.
The next day, Moses said to the people, you've committed a great sin, but now I will go up
to the Lord.
Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.
All right.
I've got to talk about this and just, I want to specify, you do not have to agree with
me on this, but I think that there's some hints in the text that talk about a deeper
reality of what's going on here.
The first is this, regardless of whether Moses, what he did is right or wrong.
God doesn't comment on that.
He allows Moses to lead even if he necessarily does the right or wrong thing.
Okay.
You will notice in the text, God doesn't say, Oh, I'm going to forgive you because you killed
3000 of your people.
He also doesn't say anywhere in the text, go and kill 3000 of your people.
None of those things exist in the text.
It's really important that we notice that because we assume things, we assume because
Moses is a chosen leader of God, Moses who was a friend of God and spoke to God face
to face, we assume that everything that he does is perfect.
But the reality is up to this point, we've seen all of our characters and they do some
really questionable things.
Yeah, they do.
Abraham's been questionable.
Yeah.
Isaac, Jacob, especially Jacob.
Yeah, especially Jacob, right?
The little usurper and Moses.
I mean, let's not forget that he killed a couple of people and then he was running from his
responsibility.
He didn't circumcise his kids.
There's been a number of decisions throughout this that have been questionable.
And let's also not forget it's coming up in the future, so we're not going to get too
far ahead of us.
Moses doesn't go into the promised land.
Don't misunderstand me.
I'm not saying that God's favor didn't rest on Moses.
I'm saying let's not pretend like everything Moses did was what God wanted him to do.
God often works in spite of us, not because of us.
Yes.
We need to say that again.
God often works in spite of us, not because of us.
I think in this section of the passage, we have to contrast God's response versus Moses's
response.
Yeah.
God who said, okay, I'm going to relent in my anger.
I'm being grace-filled.
Moses who said, take up arms, let's kill them.
That's the Spencer paraphrase translation right there.
You have to contrast those two responses.
And I'm fairly certain there's a chiasm here.
I'm not good enough with Hebrew to be able to nail it down.
So anybody who's listening, if you're really good with Hebrew, take a look and see if there's
a chiasm here with thoughts and ideas.
But I think that we're starting to see a reality, and this is going to get played out multiple
times throughout Torah.
What does God do and what do people do?
And so we need to just note that contrast because as much as we'd like to say we're
better than that, we're not.
We can often play the role of Moses in this, or we can see God's amazing grace shine on
somebody.
And then we can find somebody who's exactly like that person and show our anger.
Right.
Right?
This is actually not hard for us to do.
But God is actually, he's saying, no, I'm here to show you grace.
And Moses is saying, but their sin, their destruction is too great.
Now I'm just going to let you guys know if you disagree with me on this, it's totally
fine.
I do want to point out a couple more things for you to take a look at.
So if Moses' judgment, the 3,000 people dying, is a result of God's judgment, then why in
verse 35 does God strike them with a plague because of what they did with the calf?
Was the 3,000 the punishment or was the plague the punishment?
Yeah.
Because I don't see God striking them twice for one event.
That's not who God has been up to this point and that's not who he's going to be moving
forward.
Yeah.
Right?
I also think I want to address one more thing here that I've heard a lot of times.
Okay.
So take a look at verse 31.
Moses went back to the Lord and said, oh, what a great sin these people have committed.
They have made themselves gods of gold, but please now please forgive their sin.
But if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.
Once again, I do want to point out that Moses does have the heart to stand in the gap for
his people.
Now that he's had a chance to take a nap- Eat a Snickers.
Eat a Snickers.
Now that he's had a full night's sleep, he comes back and he's back understanding, which
by the way, I think this is not necessarily inherent in the text, but when you're upset,
maybe it's a good time to take a pause, step away and then take a breather and come back.
Now, if you do that, you are going to take the people off.
We're like, we need to deal with this now.
We're trying to deal with it and their anger.
Yeah, but that's okay.
Take them off.
I'm reminded of a passage that says in your anger, do not sin.
Yeah.
You're going to feel anger at some point.
You need to be able to stop, step away, adjust and then come back.
Yeah.
So but here what God says to Moses, he says, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot
out of my book.
Now go lead the people to the place I spoke of and my angel will go before you.
However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.
So here you have God saying, Hey, I'm the one who's going to enact punishment.
Correct.
And if they sin against me, then I will blot out their name.
Yeah.
I want to point that out because I think our assumption is all of the Israelites with the
golden calf sin against God.
And I think to a certain extent, you can say that, but God's only sinned against if he
feels sinned against.
Does that make sense?
God is going to have a lot of pangs with the Israelites coming out of this area.
He's going to have a couple of times though that he gets really fed up with them and he
deals directly with them.
It's like he annex like the discipline right away.
Yeah.
This doesn't seem to be one of those cases.
No.
In one sense, God's actually telling Moses, Hey, you overstepped.
I'm going to deal with it.
In one sense.
Now that's not directly stated in the text.
Okay.
And also if you're just wondering, this is a pretty contested over passage as far as
punishment and stuff like that, but that's a whole nother.
Yeah.
It's contested, but not a lot of people talk about it.
Yeah.
Most of the time when people talk about it, they just talk about the stupidity of the
Israelites and how they made golden calves and how Aaron was trying to cast off judgment.
But they very actually rarely talk about this interaction between God and Moses.
Yeah.
Except that they talk about standing in the gap, but they don't actually talk about what's
actually written in the text.
And one of the things we want you guys to do, just like we do, when we read this text,
we actually want to read it to understand the heart of God.
This is going to be very difficult.
One of the things that Rabbi David Forman talks about, he talks about the Lullaby effect
and how you've heard a story so many times that you start to just hear the ending before
you get there.
When you read the Bible, at least once a year, you need to read it without any preconceived
notions in your mind.
If you read that story, if you read Exodus 32 without preconceived notions, now reading
what came before it, but without your preconceived notions, what do you actually get from the
text at that point?
I'm not saying all those observations are going to be good, but you need to get past
the Lullaby effect of just hearing the words that somebody else spoke to you, including
by the way, the people on this podcast.
You need to be able to pilfer out, filter out our words and be able to hear the text
stand on its own.
I love this next thing that happens in chapter 33 because one of the things that we talk
about in the Golden Calf, we talk about this judgment that's placed on them and all these
different things.
In the back half of the book, there's this interesting thing that happens and it's why
a lot of people get frustrated reading Exodus because it gets really quote unquote boring.
Because everything that happened before the Golden Calf gets repeated again, all over
again.
This is actually really, really important for us to get.
God takes his people and says, all right, let's start over again.
We just got tripped up at the ceremony time, but I still love you.
You're still my people and I'm still going to use you to bless all nations.
Not in the midst of their lowest point, right?
Well one of their lowest points because they're going to have many low points.
I still care.
I'm going to reaffirm my covenant.
I'm going to speak it over you and I'm going to use you to bless all nations still.
Yeah.
I want to point out what happens in chapter 33 because I think it's actually very telling
on how God begins to work through Israel again.
At the beginning of chapter three, God says to Moses, he says, leave this place, you and
your people who brought you up out of Egypt, go to the land I promised you.
He says, but I will not go with you because you are a stiff necked people and I might
destroy you on the way.
Okay.
That's a good reason not to go.
I'm ticked off and I might, I might destroy you on the way.
You go ahead and go, but I'm not going to go with you.
When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any
ornaments.
For the Lord had said to Moses, tell the Israelite, your stiff necked people, if I were to go
with you for even a moment, I might destroy you.
Moses said to the Lord, you have been telling me, lead these people, but you have not let
me know whom you will send with me.
You have said, I know you by name and you have found favor with me.
If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so that I may know you and continue to
find favor with you.
Remember that this nation is your people.
The Lord replied, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest.
Then Moses said to him, if your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.
How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and your people unless you go with
us?
You will distinguish me and your people from all other people on the face of the earth.
And the Lord said to Moses, I will do the very thing you have asked because I am pleased
with you and I know you by name.
Holy cow.
That is a massive change in the people because the people here, God say, I'm not going to
go with you.
And they're like, no, he has to go with us.
If he doesn't go with us, everything is worthless.
So I've heard a couple different, there's a couple different interpretations you can
go with on this.
So one interpretation that people often that struggle with in Exodus is they're like, oh,
it seems like humanity is able to change God's mind because you have this conversation between
Moses and God where God's saying, I'm not going to do this.
And Moses is like, hey, actually, you're the one who did all this stuff leading up to this
point.
And then God's like, okay, I'll go with you.
The other interpretation is that God already knows what he's going to say at the end of
this.
And he's trying to draw Moses and the people into relationship with him.
The reality of this is you see God continually trying to draw Moses and his people back into
relationship with him over and over again.
It's a theme you see all the way through Genesis, through Exodus actually continues into Leviticus,
Numbers, Deuteronomy, all that.
God is trying to draw his people back to him.
He's trying to draw them back into relationship with him.
One of the ways he's doing this here is simply just through engaging them in conversation.
Right?
Yeah, there's points where he's frustrated.
There's points where his anger burns.
He's trying to draw his people back to him.
And he's really trying to help them understand a fundamental truth about their relationship.
Israel isn't special for any other reason than God chose them.
Right?
Yeah.
Like, the reason that he chooses them is because they're the least of all the nations.
Right?
So we read that and we think, oh, yeah, yeah.
But no, it's a serious point.
If God goes with you, you take your worthless talents and you add God and suddenly you're
a superstar.
You take your bad attitude and you add God and suddenly you're the most charismatic person
in the world.
You take your failures and you add God and you have a hundred percent success rate.
Like, this is the reality of who God is.
And he wants to dwell with his people, in his people, around his people, through his
people.
And he's told them, I want to make you into an entire nation of priests, a kingdom of
priests, because you are going to be the conduit of heaven to earth.
Israel, because people know you can't do anything on your own.
You're going to be a conduit of blessing and through you, all people are going to be blessed.
So when God engages them on this idea, he says, I'm not going to go with you.
And they go, no, we get it.
You're it.
If you don't go, we can't go.
We need you with us at all times.
Yeah.
And so then you continue this conversation between God and Moses.
And Moses then says in verse 18, he says, show me your glorious presence.
And the Lord replied, I will make all my goodness pass before you and I will call out my name,
Yahweh, before you.
I will show mercy to anyone I choose and I'll show compassion to anyone I choose.
But you may not look directly at my face for no one can see it and lived.
This whole thing happens.
And then there's a spot where the Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out Yahweh, the
Lord, the God of compassion and mercy, I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love
and faithfulness.
I lavish unfailing love on thousands of generations.
We heard that before.
We've talked about that.
Yeah.
I forgive iniquity, rebellion and sin, but I do not excuse the guilty.
I lay the sins of the parents upon the children and grandchildren and the entire family is
affected, even the children's of the third and the fourth generation.
Right.
So you look at this and you have this God who's saying, no, I am a God of compassion, mercy,
unfailing love, slow to anger, but I still take care of business when I need to.
Right.
Well, and specifically he's once again telling Moses, I will take care of the guilty.
You don't need to do this.
I do think it's worth noting, taking a look in verse eight, Moses bowed down to the ground
and worshiped Lord.
He said, if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us.
Now God's already said he's going to go with us.
Moses saying it again.
Although this is a stiff neck people, forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as
your inheritance.
Yeah.
Then the Lord said, I am making a covenant with you before all your people.
I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world.
The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord will do for you.
I'm reminded of something Jesus says in the New Testament.
He says, you, you marvel at these works, but greater works than these will you actually
see.
Greater works.
It's almost like God's the same yesterday, today and forever.
God doing his work in the Old Testament is happening in the New Testament and is now
happening in the modern church today.
If we're going to actually be an image of God, then when people encounter the church,
they should see us as the compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, forgiving wickedness,
abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands.
This is what we should be defined by.
This is who we are.
It's not unlike what Jesus says.
You're going to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and
you're going to love your neighbors yourself.
You are going to be abounding in love and forgiveness.
Abounding is a big word.
Yeah.
Those are some hefty words to live up to.
It's almost like we couldn't do it alone.
And it's harder to love and forgive than it is to maintain hate and bitterness.
Oh, so much easier.
Yeah.
It's so much easier to maintain hate and bitterness.
And so when we go counter the world with love and forgiveness, it is very difficult.
But when we actually step into that and live that out, it changes the whole community around
us.
So last weekend, you and I had a bonfire.
And I had some of those bugs bite me right around the ankles, right around the sock line.
My ankles got real itchy.
The temptation, the easy thing to do is to scratch them.
Yeah.
What's the problem with that?
It gets worse, gets itchier, but it feels so good to scratch that itch.
Yet I know that if I leave that itch alone, I put some gel on it, whatever it is, it'll
go away and my skin will return to normal.
Right?
It's the same way with love and forgiveness versus bitterness and anger.
Are you going to hold on to your bitterness and anger and scratch that itch?
Yeah.
Because it's not going to go away.
It's going to get bigger.
You're like, ah, I'm just going to do this one.
It's going to get bigger.
Yeah.
No, I get it.
I think the last thing that I really want to note from here, because on the back half
of Exodus, and we're going to talk about, do a wrap of Exodus next week, I love that
Noah's has to put a veil over his face because the presence of God is so strong on him that
his face is weird to look at.
It's glowing with the presence of God.
That's kind of funny and hilarious and also cool.
Right?
Yeah.
I don't think it's meant to be funny and hilarious.
It is funny.
It's probably not meant to be funny and hilarious, but they're like, your face is glowing.
This is really disconcerting.
We should put a veil on your face.
Yeah.
The equivalent is, can you imagine being filled with the presence of God today?
And they're like, your face is glowing.
Put a paper bag over that.
Put it in a plastic bag.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
You're not wrong.
All right.
So what do we take away from this section of Exodus?
I think, you know, honestly, I think you can actually sum this section of Exodus up pretty
well if you jump down to 34-14, where God is saying, you must worship no other gods
for the Lord whose very name is jealous is a God who is jealous about his relationship
with you.
Right?
Because you see in this passage over and over again, things that are starting to pull them
back into what they know.
Because a lot of the things that they're falling back into are things that they would have
known in Egypt.
Worship being a golden calf.
So they're pulling back into those old ways, which by the way, that's really easy for us
to do.
Really easy for us to be like, okay, I'm uncomfortable with this.
I'm going to pull back into my old ways.
Do you know what the disciples did after Jesus died?
They went back to fishing.
Right?
They went back to their old ways.
So it's a really easy thing for us to do.
And then God say, no, I don't want you to put those things in front of me.
Don't put those things in front of me.
I'm here.
I am the God and I'm jealous about my relationship with you.
And if you're viewing it in the context of a bride groom relationship, right?
When a spouse cheats, do you know what happens to the spouse who is faithful?
They actually become jealous.
There's some anger, there's hatred, there's other things, but there's a jealousy there
too.
So God is saying, essentially God in this passage is saying, hey, don't cheat on me
with other gods.
Right.
Like I'm your one and only.
By the way, some of you might have issues with that imagery.
Go read Hosea.
There is the whole thing with Hosea and Gomer and this whole image of a prostitute that
he keeps bringing back.
I mean, is just the story of God and his people.
Yeah.
Like when we say that God loves recklessly, relentlessly, you need to read the Old Testament
because we as humanity give him every reason not to love us.
But God is abounding in love, gracious, slow to anger.
That's who he is.
He is so overflowing with love that he can't do anything but love people.
And I think one of our biggest takeaways is like, are we going to accept the invitation
to engage God in relationship and be like him or when things get tough or when our leadership
disappears or when we haven't seen a move of God in about 40 days, are we going to essentially
trust in other gods?
The golden calf thing is actually a great story for just the modern church too.
Right.
Because how often you and I even, we have to God do something in our life and then like
three days later we're like, yeah, I'm going to go do this instead.
Right?
You talk about like times of revival where God is moving in a really powerful way.
And then like a week later, people are like, I, yeah, I can't, I don't have time to read
my Bible.
I have time to pray.
When in that moment in the, in the presence of God, you couldn't think of doing anything
else.
Right?
Yeah.
Well, we want to thank you guys for stopping in and listening and hearing us chat, listening
to us eat sweet potatoes, sweet potato fries specifically.
They were delicious.
Well, I'm assuming they were delicious.
I didn't eat them.
They smelled delicious.
So now everyone's like, wait, Spencer didn't share with Ben.
You are right.
I did not share with them.
Yeah.
To be fair, like sharing with me, I would eat like more than half of them.
Yeah.
If you guys have thoughts or comments, please email us at love and context at gmail.com.
If you have thoughts, questions, anything relating to Torah, we are going to have a Q
and a at the end of Leviticus.
So those thoughts and questions need to get sent soon.
You can also contact us at love and context at gmail.com as well as on Facebook at love
and context.
Yeah.
Well, until next time.
Thank you so much for listening today.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast and we hope that you got something out of it.
If you have any questions, please contact us at love and context at gmail.com.
You can also follow us on Instagram and message us through there.
Instagram is love and context.
Again, love and context at gmail.com or Instagram are the two ways to get ahold of us if you
would like.
Thank you once again.
We really appreciate you being here.
God bless.
Is that, sorry, I'm just realizing that you're keeping your face away because of chewing.
Someone's laughing because I'm still eating my sweet potato fries, but I'm leaning my
face away from the mic while I'm doing that and then leaning back in when I want to talk.
You ever wonder, I mean, I guess they're technically called like yams, but like somebody's like,
all right, name this like potato and then they eat the next one.
They're like, what about this one?
Sweet potato.
It's like first waterfall and second waterfall.
Yeah.
Hey, there's a waterfall.
Oh crap.
We found another one.
We've got a name in second waterfall.
Yeah.