The Sin of Idolatry, Part 1

Turn with me in your Bible, if you would, to Exodus chapter 32. Exodus chapter 32. We've been studying the life of Moses. The man of destiny. We've taken you from Exodus chapter 1 all the way through Exodus chapter 20. From here on out, we're going to look at different aspects of Moses' life before we conclude with his death.

On Mount Nebo. And so we'll talk about that, and we'll conclude by looking at this great man and how God used him in a marvelous way. But today, because we have just covered the statutes given to Israel, we will look at the sin of idolatry.

In Exodus chapter 32, we want you to see how quickly Israel, after hearing the voice of God in Exodus chapter 20, And making a commitment that they would do whatever God said to do, how quickly they turned. Away from their God. And so I'm going to read to you the first several verses of Exodus chapter 32.

And we're only going to cover one point this morning, and that is the character of idolatry. We'll spend a couple of weeks here just in Exodus 32 to understand the magnitude of what took place. The Bible tells us that we need to flee idolatry, we need to run from it. But instead, we tend to dabble in it and mingle in it. And hopefully, after our study of Exodus chapter 32, it will cause every one of us to run and flee. From that which takes us away from our devotion and commitment to our God. Exodus chapter 32, verse number 1.

We'll pick up the narrative here, and it says: Now, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, The people assembled about Aaron, and said to him, Come, make us a God who will go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know. what has become of him. And Aaron said to them, Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters. and bring them to me. Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron.

And he took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it into a molten calf. And they said, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Now, when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, Tom shall be a feast to the Lord. So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.

They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed to it, and said, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. And the LORD said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now then, let me alone, that my anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them, and I will make you.

A great nation. We'll stop right there this morning. The character of id. Notice the text says in verse number one: Now, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, The people assembled about Aaron.

It was a national revolt. The nation had gathered around Aaron. And they went to the man who was second in command because the one who was in command was absent.

He wasn there. And so, I want to give you four characteristics of their idolatry. I want you to, first of all, look at the spirit behind it.

The spirit behind it. What motivated these people to do this act? And there are two of them. One is impatience. One is impatience. Listen to what they say. They said to Aaron, Come make us a God who will go before us. For this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. Where's Moses? What's he doing? How come he's not here? We need some direction. We don't have any direction. So now we're going to make a God. Somehow, that will lead us into Canaan.

Maybe Moses is dead. Back in Exodus 24, Moses said to the elders, Wait here a while, and I will return to you. Moses told them he was coming back, but they wouldn't believe that. And so this imp attitude led them to commit. Idolatry. They were unwilling to wait on God's man because God would speak through Moses, and Moses was designed to be that deliverer of Israel. Their impatience led them to follow their own lusts. So many times, so many times, you will find in your life, as I have found in mine.

That our unwillingness to wait upon the Lord and His direction causes us to take matters into our own hands, doesn't it? And whenever you take matters into your own hands, what do you do? You break commandment number one, you shall have no other gods before me.

And yet, we want to make those decisions. We want to be in control of our destiny. And so we decide to take matters into our own hands, not realizing that the Bible says in Isaiah chapter 40, verse number 31.

That those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint. They'll be strong. That word wait means to wrap, to wrap around. Those who wrap their trust around God, that's what the waiting person does. He wraps his trust in God. That's why, over in Psalm 62, it says, My soul waits in silence for God only. For him is my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation. My stronghold I shall not be greatly shaken.

When we wait for God only, we demonstrate that He is our only stronghold. The psalmist would reiterate that in verse number five: My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation. My stronghold, I shall not be shaken. Verse number 8: Trust in him at all times, O people. Verse 10. Do not trust in oppression and do not vainly hope in robbery. If riches increase, do not set your heart upon them. The point being is that those who wait upon God demonstrate the fact that they are trusting God.

Israel was not about to trust God. Because God was working in his time, and that wasn't quick enough for Israel. Now, you think about that in your life. And that was the spirit behind their idolatrous act. They were impatient. Listen to what the Bible says over in Isaiah chapter 30, verse number 18.

Therefore, the Lord longs to be gracious to you. And therefore, he waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice. How blessed are all those who wait for him. Israel was not longing for their God. They were longing for a God, a God that they could muster up. And so they went to Aaron, number two in command.

They gathered around him. It must have been a very intimidating kind of thing for Aaron. Two million Jews gathered at the base of Sin. Yo, Aaron, let's have a meeting. Let's have a town meeting here at the base of Camp Sin. And let's talk about some things. We need to have this God that's going to lead us from here forward. We don't know what's happened to Moses, but they knew. They knew where Moses was. He was on the mountain. He said he was coming back. But I want you to notice a second spirit behind their idolatry.

Not only was it a spirit of impatience, it was a spirit of, listen, ingr. In. Notice the text says, this Moses.

You understand that when you go back to Acts chapter 7 and read verse number 39 in Stephen's account of what took place? It says this. And our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him, but rep him, and in their hearts turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, Make for us gods. Who will go before us for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt? We do not know what happened to him. The Bible says in Acts 7, the commentary on Exodus 32 is that they would repudiate Moses in their hearts.

Why? Because he wasn't there at their demand and they despised him for it. It's a spirit of ingratitude. Now listen to this. The spiritual health of any group of people is determined by their attitude toward those that God has designed to lead them. You need to remember that. The spiritual health of any group of people is determined by how well they follow the leadership that God has placed over them. It was a spirit of ingratitude of the people that God had placed over his nation Israel. Look at Jesus.

They despised him. Look at Paul. They despised him. Look at Stephen. They killed him. Look at the apostles.

They killed them all. And the spiritual health of any people is directly proportionate. By how they submit to the leadership that God has given to them. You can find that in your family, right? As children. Do they submit to their parents, the ones that God has given to them? You can see it in the husband-wife relationship. You can see it in the church of Jesus Christ. That's the way it is. Now, please. Don't hear me saying that listen if you guys don't submit to your pastor's leadership Your spiritual health is gonna go down the tubes That's not what I'm saying because we have a church at Christ community where I am completely Completely overwhelmed by the gratitude of the people of this church.

I have never one time in 11 years of ministry thought that the people of this church were ungrateful for me or for any of our elders. This is a special place. This is a unique place, Christ Community Church. But you know what? There are many pastors out there today who pastor a church whose people are ungrateful for that man. and for their elders. And the spiritual health of that people is directly related to their attitude. Listen, it leads to an idolatrous action. Why? Because you see, it says to God, you don't know what you're doing, God.

You made a mistake. And I'm not going to submit to your leadership. Instead, I'm going to reinvent the leadership. I'm going do it my way. And that's what Israel is doing. We're going do it our way. We're going to have worship our way. We're going to have a God that we can see, that we can mold into our image. See? And that was the spirit behind it. The second thing I want you to see is the sacrilege of it.

The sacrilege of their idolatrous acts. Think about it this way: the Bible says that our Lord is looking for true worship, right?

John 4. Those who worship him in spirit and in truth. And the sacrilege of their act is seen by their not submitting to the truth of God. Listen, it was three months, three months after they left Egypt that they found themselves at the base of Mount Sinai. And we know that they were there for approximately a year. And God was going to do a marvelous work. He wanted to give them his written word, he wanted to tell them about the tabernacle. He wanted to tell them the fact that he wanted to dwell among them.

You see, our God is so good. God says, I want to be available, I want to be accessible, and I want you to see me as such.

And God's got this great plan going on, and Israel's like saying, That plan is not good enough. We don't like that plan. And in Exodus chapter 20, verses 4 and 5, what is it God had told them? He said, You shall not make for yourselves an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. So, what does Israel do? They violate that. Now, God has told us over and over again what we can do and what we can't do.

God is a black and white God. Okay, and so he says things very plainly, very clearly. So, what part of you shall not make any graven image in my likeness? Don't you understand? Well, evidently, they didn't get it. Listen carefully. It's not that they didn't want to worship Jehovah God. They just wanted something they could see, something they could touch. Now, the problem with that is: number one, God said you can't do that.

Number two is God is spirit, right? God is spirit. And those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. You see, we think that we can conjure up an image of God. Let me tell you something.

Whenever you conjure up an image of God in your mind, you have become an idolater. We conjure up all these images. We put them in paintings, we put them in sculptures, and those are images that somehow we think will help us in our worship. And God says, they're not going to help your worship, they're going to hinder your worship.

Because those who worship me must worship me in spirit and in truth. Well, the truth is the word of Almighty God. And the very fact that He is Spirit, He is invisible, that means He's incomprehensible. And whatever our minds think that we can conjure up will always fall short of the true God. It's just not there. And they violated what God said. God said, Don't do it. What do they do? They did it. They did it because they thought it would help them. And yet, listen, sin only breeds more sin. Because what they did would cause them, as the Bible says in verse number 6, to play.

I want to let you know something. When you don't worship God in spirit and in truth, you're not worship God, you're playing God. You are. And the Hebrew word for play is a word that speaks of drunkenness and immorality. And that's confirmed over in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 when it says that God said that on that day There were many who committed immorality, and 23,000 people would die on this day because of their immoral acts. False worship, improper worship, leads to immoral acts. And that's what happened in Israel.

On this day in Exodus chapter 32. And they broke their word. Why? Because they broke God's word. And so the sacrilege in it is because they were disobedient to the word of God. He says, you must worship him in truth. You must worship him in spirit. But you see, they needed to mold something, they needed to have something at their disposal. So, what did they do? They brought God down to their level, they degraded God. This is your God, Israel. There he is. Isn't he beautiful? He's wonderful. There's your God.

And the Bible says in Romans 1, verse number 23: They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man.

And to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. God says very clearly: there is to be absolutely no physical manifestation of me in your worship.

None. Why? Because it's idolatry. And God says, you have degraded me. You can't comprehend me. And the minute you try to comprehend me, you have failed. I am incomprehensible. Aaron gave the people what they wanted. Leadership never gives the people what they want. Leadership always gives the people what they need. But you see, maybe he didn't want to lose popularity in their eyes. He knew about Exodus 17 when they wanted to stone he and Moses. So he knew that wasn't a good thing. So maybe he thought that two million Jews gathered around him at the base of Mount Sinai was going to cost him his life.

So he says, Well, you know, we could do this. Instead of standing strong and saying, you know what, we can't do that. Where was the lone voice that said, hey, folks, we can't do that. That violates the word of God. Where was that voice? And that's why silence. Is id in Exodus 32. Nobody stood. They compromised. They compromised the word of the Lord. The church of Jesus Christ today is a church that loves to mix false with truth. True. We do it in our music. We like to mix the style and the beat of the world with the words of God, don't we?

We like to mix the saved with the unsaved in our marriage. We like to mix the ecumenical with the evangelical in the church. And whatever you do, you compromise. You compromise. And that's what Aaron was doing. Here's your God. You violated the commandment. Number three, number two, number one.

And isn't that just like the church today? And that was a sacrilege of their idolatry. The third thing I want you to see is the sinfulness in it.

The sinfulness in this idolatry. The Bible says That they would sit down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

Over in verse number 25, it says: Now, when Moses saw that the people were out of control, for Aaron had let them get out of control. And the sinfulness in this thing is that they would play, they would dance, they would commit sexual immorality. It was a sad day in the life of these people. And as they would begin to dance in their nakedness and in their drunkenness, all under the guise of this is our worship to Jehovah God. This is what worship is in their minds. That when God, knowing what had taken place, told Moses, the people, your people, that you led out of Egypt.

You see, whenever you compromise the Word of God, the end result is always corruption. It's not incorruption, it's corruption. And that's what compromise leads to. And of course, that's evidence here in Exodus chapter 32. But I want you to notice three things about the sinfulness in it.

The first thing I want you to notice is how quickly they sin. The Bible says in verse number 8, they have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them.

Now, what is it that caused them to quickly turn aside? The Bible tells us. Psalm 106, verse number 19. They made a calf in Horeb and worshipped the molten image. Thus they exchanged their glory for the image of an ox that eats grass. Verse 21, here it is. They forgot. God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt. They forgot. They forgot. And it's imperative that we understand that so quickly we forget. And that's what happened to them. And because they quickly forgot, it led them into idolatry.

Also, notice how freely they forget. Sin. The Bible says in verse number 2 of Exodus 32: Aaron said to them, Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives and your sons and your daughters and bring them to me.

Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. You see how we just freely worship that which we love. We love to give our money to our vices. But notice, these gold things were no longer valuable when they could fulfill their own lusts and passions, were they?

And that's the way it is with the idolater's heart. But notice this. Verse number six. So the next day they rose what? Early. The idolatrous heart will always get up to fulfill its lusts. Won't it? We'll get up early. We'll get up real early. And we'll make sure that we get done what needs to be done. But tell people, hey, why don't you come early to church? Eh, can't do that. Gotta sleep in. Why don't you get up early and read your word and spend time on your knees before the throne of God? I can't do that.

Why? Because it doesn't serve your lusts and your passions. That's why. If it did, you'd do it. I know our time is gone, but let me look at point number four with you: the size of it.

The Bible says three times: this is a great sin. Why was this sin so great? This sin was so great because of who committed it? Israel, the chosen people. The hand delivered people. That's why it was such a great sin. They had seen the hand of God move in and among them, and they still violated the word of God. It's where they committed it. At the base of the mountain, the very mountain that God would speak to them from. The very mountain where Moses would go up and receive the written word of God and come back down again.

It was in that place that they would sin. That's why this was such a great and ominous sin. But I got good news: where sin did abound, grace did much more. God says, My anger burns against them.

I'm going to do harm to them, and Moses will plead to God on their behalf, and God will be gracious. To Israel. And I want to let you know that our God is a God of grace. And no matter how great the sin is that we commit, it is not so great that it cannot be. Forgiven, and that's the marvelous work of our God. Our God would provide for us great grace. That's our God. And no matter how great the sin is, our God is a gracious God who is willing to forgive our sin. That's why, over in Ephesians chapter 1, it says, In Him, verse 7, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight.

And I wonder this morning how many of us here today have experienced the riches of his grace? In spite of all of our sin, our God will forgive. If you go to Him and ask Him to forgive you, He will. Because that's the kind of God he is. There was a song written about the greatness of God's grace. It goes as follows: Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. Yonder on Calvary's mount outpoured, There was the blood of the Lamb spilt. Sin and despair, like the sea waves cold, threaten the soul with infinite loss.

Grace that is greater, yes, grace untold, point to the refuge of the mighty cross. Dark is the stain that we cannot hide. What can avail to wash it away? Look, there is a flowing, a crimson tide, wider than snow. You may be to-day. Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, freely bestowed on all who believe. You that are longing to see His face, will you this moment His grace? Receive let's pray.