So I said to them, 'Whoever has gold, let him take it off,' and they gave it to me. And when I threw it into the fire, out came this calf!" Sermons
I. THE BREAKING OF THE TABLES (vers. 15-19). The downward journey was a silent one. Moses refrains from communicating to Joshua the news he has received. He is absorbed in his own thoughts. And while he muses, the fire burns (Psalm 39:3). So soon as they approach the camp, sounds of revelry are heard. Joshua, with his soldier's instinct, thinks at once of war, but Moses can tell him that it is "not the voice of them that shout for mastery," nor yet "the voice of them that cry for being overcome" that he hears, but "the voice of them that cry" (ver. 8). Even Moses, however, is unprepared for the spectacle which presents itself, as, pursuing the descent, some turn in the road at length puts before his eyes the whole scene of folly. The tables of testimony are in his hands, but these, in his hot anger, he now dashes from him, breaking them in pieces on the rocks (ver. 19). It was an act of righteous indignation, but symbolic also of the breaking of the covenant. Of that covenant the tables of stone were all that still remained, and the dashing of them to pieces was the final act in its rupture. Learn, 1. The actual sight of wickedness is necessary, to give us full sympathy with God in the hot displeasure with which he regards it. 2. The deepest and most loving natures are those most capable of being affected with holy indignation. Who shall compete with Moses in the boundlessness of his love for Israel? But the honour of Jehovah touches him yet more deeply. 3. It is right, on suitable occasions, to give emphatic expression to the horror with which the sight of great wickedness inspires us. II. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CALF (ver. 20). Returning to the camp, Moses brought the orgies of the people to a speedy termination. He had little difficulty in restoring order. His countenance, blazing with anger, and exhibiting every sign of grief, surprise, and horror, struck immediate dismay into the evil-doers. No one, apparently, had the courage to resist him. The idolaters slunk in guilty haste to their tents, or stood paralysed with fear, rooted to the spot at which he had discovered them. He, on his part, took immediate steps for ridding the camp of the visible abomination. "He took the calf which they had made and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it." View this - 1. As a bitter humiliation. What could be more humiliating to these idolaters than to see their god ground to powder, and its dust made into a nauseous mixture, which afterwards they were compelled to drink? But is not this the end of all sin? The instruments of our sin become the instruments of our punishment. Our sin turns to bitterness. The golden sheen by which it at first allured us disappears from it. It ends in humiliation and degradation. 2. As a righteous retribution. Why was the calf thus ground to powder, and given to the Israelites to drink? It was no mere act of revenge on Moses' part. It was no hasty doing of his anger. It was a just retribution for a great sin. It was a method deliberately adopted of branding idol and idolaters alike with the print of the Almighty's judgment. It suggests to us the correspondence between sin and its punishment; the certainty of our sins coming home to roost; the fact that sin will be paid back to us in its own coin. Sin and retribution hang together. We "receive the things done in the body" (2 Corinthians 5:10). 3. As a prophecy of worse evil to come. Bitter as this humiliation was, it was not the whole. It was but the mark put upon the deed by God, which told those who had committed it that they must abide by it, and be prepared to eat the fruit of their doings. The drinking of the dust had its sequel in the slaughter and the plagues (vers. 27, 35). Even so, the bitterness and humiliation following from sins in this life do not exhaust their punishment. They warn of worse punishment in the world to come. III. AARON'S EXCUSES (vers. 21-25). The first duty was to destroy the calf. This accomplished, or while the work was proceeding, Moses addresses himself to Aaron. His words are cuttingly severe, - "What did this people unto thee?" etc. (ver. 21). Aaron, on his side, is deprecating and humble. He is afraid of Moses' anger. He addresses Moses as "my lord," and proceeds to make excuses. His excuses are typical, and deserve consideration. 1. He falls back upon the old, old plea - as old as Eden - that the blame of his sin rested on some one else than himself. "Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are bent on mischief. For they said to me," etc. (vers. 22-24). It is, as we say, the old, old story of all evil-doers - "It wasn't me, indeed it wasn't; it was those wicked people who made me do it." It is the weak, childish excuse of all who, having been tempted into sin, or having through their own irresolution fallen into it, have not the honesty or manliness to make at once a frank avowal of their fault. An easy way this, were the excuse admissible, of getting rid of our responsibility; but transgressors were early taught that they will not be allowed to avail themselves of it (Genesis 3:12-20). It is not a plea which will be held valid on the day of judgment. All, more or less, are conscious of pressure exerted on them by their circumstances. There is, however, no fatality binding us to yield to that pressure, if yielding means sin. The pressure is our trial. Aaron's sin lay in his unmanly fear, in his not having the resolution to say at the critical time, No. Probably Aaron would have urged that if he had not yielded, the people would have killed him. "Then," Moses would have answered, "let them kill you. Better a thousand times that they had killed you than that you should have been the means of leading Israel into this great sin." Yet how often is the same species of excuse met with! "I couldn't help it;" "The necessity of my situation;" "Compelled by circumstances;" "Customs of the trade;" "If I hadn't done it, I would have offended all my friends;" "I should have lost my situation," etc. It may be all true: but the point is, Was the thing wrong? If it was, the case of Aaron teaches us that we cannot shield ourselves by transferring the blame of what we have done to circumstances. 2. If Aaron's first excuse was bad, the second was worse - it just happened. He put the gold, poor man, into the fire, and "there came out this calf!" It came out. He did not make it; it just came out. This was a kind of explaining which explained nothing. Yet it is precisely paralleled by people attributing, say, to their "luck," to "chance," to "fate," to "destiny," what is really their own doing. Thomas Scott says - "No wise man ever made a more unmeaning or foolish excuse than Aaron did. We should never have supposed 'that he could speak well,' were we to judge of his eloquence by this specimen." Note - (1) The right way of dealing with a fault is frankly to acknowledge it. (2) Though Moses so severely rebuked Aaron, he could yet intercede for him (Deuteronomy 9:20). The future high priest, who truly had "infirmity" (Hebrews 5:2), needed, on this occasion, an intercessor for himself. The severity of Moses was the severity of aggrieved love. - J.O.
There came out this calf. I. There never was a speech more true to one disposition of our human nature than this of Aaron. WE ARE ALL READY TO LAY THE BLAME ON THE FURNACES. "The fire did it," we are all of us ready enough to say. "In better times we might have been better, broader men, but now, behold, God puts us into the fire, and we came out thus." Our age, our society, is what, with this figure taken out of the old story of Exodus, we have been calling it. It is the furnace. Its fire can set, and fix, and fasten what the man puts into it. But, properly speaking, it can create no character. It can make no truly faithful soul a doubter. It never did. It never can.II. THE SUBTLETY AND ATTRACTIVENESS OF THIS EXCUSE EXTENDS NOT ONLY TO THE RESULTS WHICH WE SEE COMING FORTH IN OURSELVES; IT COVERS ALSO THE FORTUNES OF THOSE FOR WHOM WE ARE RESPONSIBLE. Everywhere there is this cowardly casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us. It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. It is our minister, fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls. III. THERE IS DELUSION AND SELF-DECEPTION IN THIS EXCUSE. Very rarely indeed does a man excuse himself to other men and yet remain absolutely unexcused in his own eyes. Often the very way to help ourselves most to a result which we have set before ourselves is just to put ourselves into a current which is sweeping on that way, and then lie still, and let the current do the rest, and in all such cases it is so easy to ignore or to forget the first step, and so to say that it is only the drift of the current which is to blame for the dreary shore on which at last our lives are cast up by the stream. IV. If the world is thus full of the Aaron spirit, WHERE ARE WE TO FIND ITS CURE? Its source is a vague and defective sense of personality. I cannot look for its cure anywhere short of that great assertion of the human personality which is made when a man personally enters into the power of Jesus Christ. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.) 1. We defer to public opinion. Great is the tyranny of public opinion, and many dare not brave it. Aaron dare not in the text, and thousands still are overawed by it. We like to be talked about, but not against. We stay short of being what we ought to be, of doing what we ought to do, for fear of the adverse criticism of our neighbours, work-fellows, countrymen. 2. We defer to public custom. The Jewish rabble wanted images, such as were in Egypt, and Aaron had not courage to resist the demand. So we often bow to the questionable customs of society. Our convictions are otherwise, but we have not the bravery to be singular — we cast a grain of incense on the world's altar when we ought to hurl a stone at its gods. 3. We defer to public violence. "They gathered themselves together unto" (ver. 1) — rather "against" — Aaron in a tumultuous manner, to compel him to do what they wished. And Aaron was coerced by them. So we often fear the anger, menace, violence of those around us, and act a consciously unworthy part. Aaron in the text blaming "the people" is a picture of thousands of us to-day! We do not wish to act thus and thus, but we are the victims of our social surroundings. It is not I, but the people. We, none of us, are guilty; it is the crowd behind which pushes us. II. HE BLAMED NATURE. "I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf." As if it were not his fault, but nature's. He says nothing about the mould that he made; nothing about the graving tool that he used (ver. 4); but nature has done it — it has done itself. So do we reason still. 1. We blame nature for our sins. We ignore the fact that we failed to interpose our will; that we fed the fires of passion; that in making preparation for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof, we constructed the mould. 2. We blame nature for our miseries.Lessons: 1. The childishness of this method of shifting responsibility. 2. The foolishness of it. 3. The uselessness of it. (W. L. Watkinson.) (S. Cox, D. D.) Here is a man all gross and sensual, a man still young who has already lost the freshness, glory, and purity of youth. Suppose you question him about his life. You expect him to be ashamed, repentant. There is not a sign of anything like that! He says: "I am the victim of circumstances. What a corrupt, licentious, profane age this is in which we live! When I was in college I got into a bad set. When I went into business I was surrounded by bad influences. When I grew rich, men flattered me. When I grew poor, men bullied me. The world has made me what I am, this fiery, passionate, wicked world. I had in my hands the gold of my boyhood which God gave me. Then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf." Another man is not a profligate, but is a miser, or a mere business machine. "What can you ask of me?" he says; "this is a mercantile community. The business man who does not attend to his business goes to the wall. I am what this intense commercial life has made me. I put my life in there, and it came out this." And then he gazes fondly at his golden calf, and his knees bend under him with the old long habit of worshipping it, and he loves it still, even while he abuses and disowns it. And so with the woman of society. "The fire made me this," she says of her frivolity and pride. And so of the politician and his selfishness and partisanship. "I put my principles into the furnace, and this came out." And so of the bigot and his bigotry, the one-sided Conservative with his stubborn resistance to all progress, the one-sided Radical with his ruthless iconoclasm. So of all partial and fanatical men. "The furnace made us," they are ready to declare. Remember that the subtlety and attractiveness of this excuse, this plausible attributing of power to inanimate things and exterior conditions to create what only man can make, extends not only to the results which we see coming forth in ourselves; it covers also the fortunes of those for whom we are responsible. The father says of his profligate son, for whom he has never done one wise or vigorous thing to make a noble and pure-minded man: "I cannot tell how it has come. It has not been my fault. I put him into the world, and this came out." The father whose faith has been mean and selfish says the same of his boy who is a sceptic. Everywhere there is this cowardly casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us. It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. It is our minister fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls. If we say to it, "Make us noble," it does make us noble. If we say to it, "Make us mean," it does make us mean. And then we take the nobility and say, "Behold, how noble I have made myself." And we take the meanness and say, "See how mean the world has made me."... The only hope for any of us is in a perfectly honest manliness to claim our sins. "I did it, I did it," let me say of all my wickedness. Let me refuse to listen for one moment to any voice which would make my sins less mine. It is the only honest and the only hopeful way, the only way to know and be ourselves. When we have done that, then we are ready for the gospel, ready for all that Christ wants to show us that we may become, and for all the powerful grace by which He wants to make us be it perfectly.(Bp. Phillips Brooks.) People Aaron, Egyptians, Isaac, Israelites, Joshua, Levi, Levites, MosesPlaces Egypt, SinaiTopics Break, Broke, Calf, Cast, Fire, Gold, Image, Jewelry, Ox, Tear, ThrewOutline 1. The people in the absence of Moses, caused Aaron to make a calf7. God informs Moses, who intercedes for Israel, and prevails 15. Moses comes down with the tablets 19. He breaks them 20. He destroys the calf 22. Aaron's excuse for himself 25. Moses causes the idolaters to be slain 30. He prays for the people Dictionary of Bible Themes Exodus 32:24 4618 calf Library The Golden Calf'And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 2. And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. 3. And all the people brake off the golden … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture The Swift Decay of Love The Hebrews and the Philistines --Damascus Threefold Repentance The Covenant of an Everlasting Priesthood How those who Use Food Intemperately and those who Use it Sparingly are to be Admonished. Letter xix (A. D. 1127) to Suger, Abbot of S. Denis Seasons of Covenanting. Letter xxii (Circa A. D. 1129) to Simon, Abbot of S. Nicholas Ninth Sunday after Trinity Carnal Security and Its vices. The Prophet Micah. Instruction for the Ignorant: How those are to be Admonished who Decline the Office of Preaching Out of Too Great Humility, and those who Seize on it with Precipitate Haste. Purity and Peace in the Present Lord How those that are at Variance and those that are at Peace are to be Admonished. Moses the Type of Christ. Solomon's Temple Spiritualized The True Manner of Keeping Holy the Lord's Day. The Old Testament Canon from Its Beginning to Its Close. Exodus Links Exodus 32:24 NIVExodus 32:24 NLT Exodus 32:24 ESV Exodus 32:24 NASB Exodus 32:24 KJV Exodus 32:24 Bible Apps Exodus 32:24 Parallel Exodus 32:24 Biblia Paralela Exodus 32:24 Chinese Bible Exodus 32:24 French Bible Exodus 32:24 German Bible Exodus 32:24 Commentaries Bible Hub |