Deuteronomy 9:13-29--The Golden Calf

Deuteronomy 9:13-29
English Standard Version

The Golden Calf
13 “Furthermore, the LORD said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stubborn people. 14 Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’ 15 So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. 16 And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the LORD your God. You had made yourselves a golden calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you. 17 So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. 18 Then I lay prostrate before the LORD as before, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed, in doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD to provoke him to anger. 19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the LORD bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me that time also. 20 And the LORD was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him. And I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. 21 Then I took the sinful thing, the calf that you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. And I threw the dust of it into the brook that ran down from the mountain.

22 “At Taberah also, and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you provoked the LORD to wrath. 23 And when the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go up and take possession of the land that I have given you,’ then you rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God and did not believe him or obey his voice. 24 You have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew you.

​25 “So I lay prostrate before the LORD for these forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said he would destroy you. 26 And I prayed to the LORD, ‘O LORD God, do not destroy your people and your heritage, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 27 Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not regard the stubbornness of this people, or their wickedness or their sin, 28 lest the land from which you brought us say, “Because the LORD was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness.” 29 For they are your people and your heritage, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.’

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Moses recounts for the people their rebellions starting with the Golden Calf at Mount Sinai, right after they had made a covenant to the LORD to be careful to do all that was in the Law before they had ever seen it, and the LORD told them they would break the covenant, and the LORD even sent Moses back down before he got started to remind them to be careful to not break the covenant they were given orally by Moses (Moses tried to tell God that was unnecessary because they had just sworn to it, but God told him to do it anyways because He knew what was going to happen), and it was not even forty days that they let Moses be on the mountain with God before they assumed him dead and that the LORD had killed him and they had Aaron help them make a golden calf that they said was the LORD that led them out of Egypt, breaking the second commandment and they engaged in all kinds of pagan practices and sexual sins to "worship" this god they had created engaging in even more sin.

The LORD's anger burned hot against them in a visible form so that the whole mountain was on fire, and Moses too became angry with the people and broke the stone tablets that the LORD had just carved out for him.  The LORD tested Moses saying that He would destroy all the people and make a great nation out of Moses and his family instead, but Moses knew that that LORD must fulfill His covenant that He made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to each of the sons of Israel--including Judah from whom the Messiah was promised to come.

Moses interceded for the people and specifically for Aaron, and the LORD did not immediately kill them, but they were judged by their wandering in the wilderness for forty years and all of them fell dead there save Joshua and Caleb.  Moses mentions the rebellion that brought about that judgment next when the ten spies brought back the bad report and the whole nation rioted and was ready to kill Moses, Aaron, Joshua and Caleb and they were ready to choose their own leader to take them back to Egypt.  Then the LORD told them they would not enter the Promised Land, just like they had said--they would all die in the wilderness--and when He told them to turn around to head towards the Red Sea they once again rebelled and tried to go up in their own strength to defeat the Canaanites and were defeated.  The total time they spent in the wilderness from the time of the first Passover to the time they finally came back to take the Trans-Jorden area and were ready to enter the Promised Land was the forty years that the LORD had promised.

Moses' ministry was one of intercession for the people that God would not simply destroy them for their sin, but that the people that He had chosen for His possession might be forgiven and that they would be allowed to continue to exist for the sake of the covenant and as a testimony of who God is to the nations.  For if the LORD destroyed them all, then they nations would say that the LORD was not good and simply brought them out of Egypt to kill them in the wilderness, making false promises to them about deliverance and a Promised Land.  There are some that claim that we as Christians are clinging to a false hope of heaven and the cross and that the LORD cannot provide such a redemption or salvation and cannot deliver His people to the Promised Land of the New Heaven and the New Earth--these people believe that all there is for us here and now is pain and suffering and death.  But we know that we can believe in the eternal covenant that the LORD made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that it was a covenant meant for all the peoples when the LORD said to Abraham, "Through you, all the nations of the world will be blessed."  We know that God's Name and reputation are on the line, and it is for His good pleasure that He has chosen to redeem an undeserving people to Himself and to change them into the likeness of His own Son and bring them near to Him by adoption so that we might call Him "Abba, Father."  May we live lives that are consistent with the new nature that we have been given through Christ so that we will love the Law and obey it and not be rebellious people that prove that we were never changed like this generation of Israelites did--having a "Passover" or "Red Sea" experience was not enough to change them and neither is having a "salvation experience" or "baptism" enough to guarantee someone's salvation if they were never changed from the inside out through the regeneration that comes from God through the power of the Holy Spirit.