Sharper Iron & The Saga of Salvation: The Right Worship of God Gone Wrong

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Rev. Dustin Beck, pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Warda, TX joins host Rev. Timothy Appel to study Exodus 32:1-14.

How should people rightly worship the one true God? The entirety of God’s Word can be looked at through this lens. The LORD spent the previous seven chapters giving Moses instructions so that His people would worship him rightly in His tabernacle. Yet at the very moment Moses prepares to come down the mountain, everything comes unraveled for Israel. Their idolatrous desire for an idol to touch and see bore awful fruit. Ears that should have been open to hear the Word of God were closed. Gold that should have been crafted into a beautiful mercy seat was melted and formed into a diminutive calf. A man who should have served as a priest to the true God served as the lackey for a statue. Though the LORD’s name was used, idolatry still snuck in. The LORD responded with righteous anger, justly ready to destroy these people who had grossly broken the covenant they had sealed only forty days earlier. Moses, serving as a type of Christ, stood in for the people. He appealed to the LORD for Israel based on the LORD’s reputation among the nations and the LORD’s promises to His people. The LORD relented for the sake of His merciful promises, which He never changes for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. Here is the answer to the question of right worship. Right worship is faith in Jesus, our crucified and risen Savior.

“The Saga of Salvation” is a mini-series on Sharper Iron that takes a step-by-step walk through the book of Exodus. This premier account of salvation in the Old Testament proclaims that the LORD is the one true God, the Creator and Redeemer, who alone is worthy of our worship and faith, all the while pointing us forward to the ultimate deliverance He gives through the exodus accomplished by Christ.

Sharper Iron, hosted by Rev. Timothy Appel, looks at the text of Holy Scripture both in its broad context and its narrow detail, all for the sake of proclaiming Christ crucified and risen for sinners. Two pastors engage with God’s Word to sharpen not only their own faith and knowledge, but the faith and knowledge of all who listen.

Sharper Iron is underwritten by Lutheran Church Extension Fund, where your investments help support the work of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Visit lcef.org.

Exodus 32:1-14

The Golden Calf

32 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.” 2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden[a] calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” 6 And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”

11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” 14 And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.

Footnotes:

Exodus 32:4 Hebrew cast metal; also verse 8