- The next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” Exodus 32:30 – While Moses was up on the mountain receiving the words of the Lord for the people of Israel, we see the people let their impatience win in their hearts and they chose to sin a great sin. They created a golden idol that they worshipped as the god who rescued them from Egyptian slavery. We also see that even beyond the idolatry, scripture tells us that their worship practices of this idol led them to behave in some disgusting, depraved ways. Moses upon seeing all this understood the gravity of this situation better than apparently anyone else did in the congregation. While agreeing and stepping into a covenant with the Lord surrounding His word, they must have already “forgotten” that the punishment for idolatry was execution. What we see then Moses say in our verse is an understatement, this was a great sin the people had committed, one that deserved the entire congregation that participated being executed. Moses, being a loving leader, approached the Lord to make atonement for them, and was even willing to give up his own life with the people if the Lord would not forgive. Here we see Moses being another early example of Jesus. Jesus came down to earth, witnessed the depravity of sin the world had freely stepped into, and approached the Father to make atonement for our grievous sins. His life was given so we could have life and step into the Promise Land of Heaven. Let us not forget the beauty of atonement. Without Moses, the people would have never seen past that day. Without Jesus we would never see Heaven. Without our Savior atoning for our sins, we’d have nothing in this life except a future of condemnation in Hell. Praise the Lord we have a perfect sacrifice for our sins and a perfect Savior in Jesus. I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac – Daily DEVO 3176
- Exodus 32 Daily DEVO When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Exodus 32:1 – Weariness in our waiting can lead us falling into the temptation to take matters into our own hands rather than trusting them in God’s hands. We see that clearly in our passage today and we see clearly how that worked for them. I know God’s timing may seem off to you, but trust me it’s perfect. If you’re pursuing God yet you feel like things aren’t moving forward like you want, remind yourself His timing is perfect and continue to wait On Him. If we knew all that God knew about our future, we’d handle things exactly like He is handling them. Don’t let your impatience lead you to do things that’s only going to lead to regret. God sees you, God is working, and God is going to come through at the perfect time like always. I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac – Daily DEVO 826
- So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf. Exodus 32:24 – A little context here is important. This is Aaron speaking to the Israelites while Moses is up on the mountain talking with God. During the time they were waiting on Moses to come back down, the people had Aaron create a golden calf for them to worship. Aaron took their gold, melted it down, used tools to create the calf for them, and set it and an altar up to worship it for the people. Yet when confronted with the sin, he says he was simply given the gold, he threw it in the fire, and out jumped the golden calf. He’s avoiding any real responsibility of leading the people away from God. While we can see the foolishness of this let us remember God also sees how we like to avoid taking responsibility as well. Maybe we aren’t creating golden calves to lead people away from God, but we can with our words and actions lead people away from a pursuit of Jesus. Our cruel words to a customer service worker can taint their desire to want to know Jesus more because we’ve set a bad example of a disciple. Our lack of sharing the truth of what God says about our friend’s sin to them will cause them to continue on their path towards sin and away from God. No golden calves made, but our actions and words will still have the same result. People not following God. Rather than avoiding the conversation about how we are doing this, let’s own however we’ve done this till now and change our ways. Let’s make sure in every way our life if pointing people to Jesus. I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac – Daily DEVO 1915
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