This is your God?

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Exodus 32:1–6

40 As a Time of Testing

• Days of rain during the flood. (Gen. 7:4)
• Days the spies spent in Promised Land (Num.14:34)
• Years spent in the wilderness. (Num. 32:13)
• Days Goliath taunted the Israelites. (1st Sam. 17:16)
• Days the Lord cared for Elijah. (1 Kings 19:8)
• Days Nineveh’s had to repent. (Jonah 3:4)
• Days Jesus was in the wilderness. (Mat. 4:2)
• Days resurrected Jesus spent with believers before being taken up to Heaven. (Acts 1:3)

This is your God?

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Exodus 32:1–6

Idol Making

Isaiah 30:22

“And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, “Be gone!”

Who Delivered from Egypt?

• Exodus 32:1, “…the people said “Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt.”

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• Exodus 32:7 “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.”

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• Judges 6:8 “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘It was I who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out from the house of slavery.” (Deut. 20:1; Jud. 2:1; 6:8; 2 Kings 17:36; Psa. 81:10; 2:10; Mic. 6:4)

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• Exodus 32:4 “…This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”

False god; False Worship

1. Cao Dai: A Vietnamese religion puts Jesus Christ in a heavenly council with Buddha, Confucius, and Joan of Arc.

2. Rastafari: Mixes biblical elements with African traditions; with Emperor Haile Selassie as a divine figure or the re-incarnated Christ.

3. Christian Science: Uses the Bible alongside the writings of Mary Baker Eddy to promote spiritual healing, deny the reality of matter, as well as sin.

4. Santería and Vodou: Fuses West African Yoruba beliefs with Roman Catholicism. Some put African deities on Catholic saints.

This is your God?

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Exodus 32:1–6

False god; False Worship

Acts 7:41 “At that time they made a calf and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.”

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1 Corinthians 10:7 “Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and stood up to play.”

Isaiah 44:9-20 – Making an Idol

“Those who fashion a graven image are all of them futile, and their precious things are of no profit; even their own witnesses fail to see or know, so that they will be put to shame. Who has fashioned a god or cast an idol to no profit? Behold, all his companions will be put to shame, for the craftsmen themselves are mere men.

Isaiah 44:9-20 – Making an Idol

Let them all assemble themselves, let them stand up, let them tremble, let them together be put to shame. The man shapes iron into a cutting tool and does his work over the coals, fashioning it with hammers and working it with his strong arm. He also gets hungry and his strength fails; he drinks no water and becomes weary. Another shapes wood, he extends a measuring line; he outlines it with red chalk.

Isaiah 44:9-20 – Making an Idol

He works it with planes and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like the form of a man, like the beauty of man, so that it may sit in a house. Surely he cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow. Then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself; he also makes a fire to bake bread.

Isaiah 44:9-20 – Making an Idol

He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven image and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he eats meat as he roasts a roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire.” But the rest of it he makes into a god, his graven image. He falls down before it and worships; he also prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god.”

Isaiah 44:9-20 – Making an Idol

They do not know, nor do they understand, for He has smeared over their eyes so that they cannot see and their hearts so that they cannot comprehend. No one recalls, nor is there knowledge or understanding to say, “I have burned half of it in the fire and also have baked bread over its coals. I roast meat and eat it. Then I make the rest of it into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood!” He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside. And he cannot deliver himself, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

This is your God?

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Exodus 32:1–6

Cautionary Story

1st John 5:21 “Little children, guard yourselves from idols.”

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1st Corinthians 10:6–7 “Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were…”

Cautionary Story

1. The people to create what God has provided.

2. Rather than wait on God, they initiate

3. The offerings are demanded rather than willingly given

4. The important and elaborate preparations are missing

Cautionary Story

5. The rush job produces a pathetic result, compared to God’s plan.

6. Holiness of God is not considered

7. The invisible omnipresent God becomes a tangible caricature

8. The personal, active God cannot see, speak, or act.

Donald Fretheim, Exodus, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1991), pp. 280, 281

Cautionary Story

1st Corinthians 10:6–7 “Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were…”

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Acts 7:39 “Our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him, but repudiated him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt,

This is your God?

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Exodus 32:1–6