God Reveals the Idolatry to Moses

Old habits die hard, and this may be even more true when it comes to old religious habits. Throughout human history, religious syncretism has been a recurring theme, even among God’s people. How many professing Christians, for example, attend church on Sundays but also follow astrology and other superstitious practices? In our own day, many people claim to follow Jesus but also think there is nothing wrong with affirming ideologies of sexual perversion, which themselves are really just anti-Christian religious views about the nature of human beings that reject God as the Creator and determiner of right and wrong.

To blend professed faith in the one true God with other religious views and practices, however, is extremely dangerous, as we see in today’s passage. Exodus 32:1–6 told us how the Israelites turned to the worship of the golden calf while Moses was receiving the law on Mount Sinai, thereby mingling the worship of Yahweh with paganism. Verses 7–10 give us God’s initial response to this great sin, recording His intent to allow His wrath to burn hot against Israel.

The Lord does not consider idolatry to be a minor sin, for Exodus 32:9–10 makes clear His willingness to destroy Israel and make a new nation of servants out of Moses and his children. In fact, at other times in the history of Israel, the covenant community was brought to the brink of destruction because of its worship of other gods. Impenitent idolatry, for instance, resulted in the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel into Assyria, where most of the nation disappeared and was assimilated, as well as the southern kingdom of Judah into Babylon, from which many did not return (2 Kings 17:7–23; 25:1–21). To flirt with idolatry is to court one’s own destruction.

Idolatry is the primal sin, the root from which all other transgressions grow. Paul tells us this in Romans 1:18–3:20, where we read that humanity’s exchanging of the worship of the one true God for other deities was the first step into the darkness that now consumes unregenerate people. Today’s passage reflects this idea, for Exodus 32:7 notes that the people of Israel “corrupted themselves” by worshiping the golden calf. False religion brings moral corruption into a people, causing them to descend into further violations of the law of God. The Lord’s response in verses 8–10 recognizes this problem and was a move to stop the spread of even further wickedness.