Moses Smashes the Ten Commandments (Exodus 32)

Last time we left Moses, he had been on the mountaintop with God for 40 days. The Israelites got impatient waiting for him and approached Moses’ brother Aaron with a request to make them a new god out of their gold earrings. God told Moses to go back down the mountain because God knew what the people were doing. God sees everything.

 "I am so angry with those people right now!” God said. “I delivered them from slavery and I led them through the desert. I fed them when they were hungry and gave them something to drink when they were thirsty! Now I feel like destroying them all and starting over. I could make a great nation out of you Moses.”

 Moses begged God. “No please don’t destroy them. I will talk to them. Besides, what will all the other nations think, especially the Egyptians, when they find out that you brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, then killed them all here at this mountain.”
 “I will spare them because you asked me to spare them.” God replied. “But there will be punishment."



Don’t you wish that you could talk with God? You can! That is what prayer is. Prayer IS talking to God. We don’t have to memorize and recite what someone else wrote down. God wants to hear our thoughts. And you can pray anywhere, not just kneeling by your bed or at the dinner table. God always hears you! God loves when we talk/pray with Him.



Moses took the Ten Commandments which God had written on two stone tablets with his finger, and headed back down the mountain. Half way down he joined up with Joshua who had waited that whole time for Moses to return. Wow! He was so patient. Not like the rest of the people.
 As Moses and Joshua descended the mountain together, they began to hear some noise. “It sounds like the rumbling of war.” Joshua said.
 “No.” Replied Moses. “It’s not the sound of battle being won or lost. It is the sound of a celebration.”

As they neared the foot of the mountain, Moses could see all the people dancing around. And in the middle of the celebration was the golden calf! Moses was so angry that he raised the two tablet of stone on which were written the commandments above hid head and smashed them at the base of the mountain. He knocked the golden calf into the fire and melted it down. Then he went over to his brother Aaron.
 "What is the matter with you?” Moses asked. “How could the people convince you to do something so wrong in the eyes of God?”

 Aaron tried to explain. “You were taking way too long up there Moses. The people were getting impatient. I got nervous when I saw a million people marching toward me. They had already decided that they wanted me to make them a god. I didn’t want to, but to calm them down, I asked them to give me all their gold. I threw the gold into the fire and POOF! out came a golden calf!”

 Did Aaron really think that Moses was that stupid? Aaron let his fear of the people get into the way of his obedience to God. Sometimes we worry more about what other people will think than what God thinks. Sometimes we put more trust in pleasing people, than we do in God’s protection.

 “You have let the people get completely out of control.” Moses scolded his brother. “Tomorrow I will call a meeting of all the people who are truly sorry for what has happened here.”
 The next day, Moses gathered all the people. “I will go back up the mountain and maybe I can obtain forgiveness from God for you.” The people were ashamed about how they had behaved.

 So Moses went back up the mountain, again. When He approached God, Moses said that he would take the punishment for all the people if God would just forgive them. Does this sound familiar? Jesus took our punishment. He could do that because He was sinless. Moses however was not. God said.
“I will forgive the people but you will not take the punishment. I will send a plague into the camp. Some will get sick and some will die. Then you will lead the remaining people into the promised land that I had promised. I will not go with you though. I will send an angel to lead you.
 So a plague went throughout camp. Some people died. Then it came time to leave again for the promised land. Moses told the people how God would not be doing the leading from now on because He was so angry with them, but that an angel would be doing the leading. The people were very afraid that they would not have God as their guide. As a sign of repentance (Being sorry) none of them wore any more jewelry for the rest of their journey.

So this week we can learn lessons from four different people.
1. From Moses we know that talking with God is praying. We can pray and where, any time. God hears us. (Phil 4:6)
2. From Joshua we learned to be patient waiting on God. We will see in future stories how God used Joshua in amazing ways. (James 5:7)
3. From Aaron we learned that when it comes to pleasing men or pleasing God, God always comes first. (Gal 1:10)
4. From the impatient people we see that disobeying God has consequences. (1Corinth 6:9)

Golden Calf (Exodus 32)

Ok, so I know we took a little detour from Moses on Mt. Sinai. Let’s not forget where we left off with him. God had just given Moses the Ten Commandments written on two stone tablets. Moses was on the mountain for 40 days with God! Joshua, Moses’ right hand man, was camped about halfway up the mountain. He was waiting for Moses. Aaron, Moses’ brother, and about 70 other men were waiting for Moses at the base of the mountain. The other one million Hebrews were back at their camp a little ways from the mountain. I just want to follow up a little more on what we talked about last time, accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

 If you prayed that prayer last time and meant it from your heart, you are what the Bible calls “saved”. You have a home waiting for you in heaven! But until we get there, we are living on this earth as followers of Jesus. When you were saved, God sealed you with His Holy Spirit. (2 Cor 1:22) That is God’s guarantee! Wow! No one or nothing can snatch you from His hands! (John 10:29) He has placed His Spirit inside you. The Holy Spirit is now living in you. He is a part of you.
 We are born with a body and a mind. The bible says that our bodies are sinful and desire to please ourselves instead of God. Our mind, (thoughts, emotions and will) decides what to do. Now we have another part of us. Our spirit, which is holy. Here’s is our situation as we live our lives: Our spirit wants to do only good. Our bodies want to do wrong. So our mind is the tiebreaker! That is why we should “renew” our minds. (Romans 12:2) If we play violent video games more than we read the bible, our minds will lean more toward the sinful stuff that our body wants. If we pray and talk to God more than we watch some of the bad stuff on television or our computer, the our minds will lean more toward pleasing God which is what our spirit wants.
 Television, computers,video games, hanging with the wrong crowd, or reading the wrong stuff can pull us in the wrong direction, but God has given us the Bible, the privilege of talking to Him, good TV shows and movies and loving people to hang out with to help us in the right direction. His direction.

 Ok back to Moses. He was on top of Mt. Sinai for 40 days. I’m sure everyone was wondering what happened to him. He was never gone for more than a couple of days before. Joshua waited patiently half way up the mountain. But the Hebrews were getting restless. They marched to the base of the mountain where Aaron and the 70 leaders were camped out.




“Moses has been gone way too long.” The people said to Aaron. “Something has happened to him.
He brought us out of Egypt, but now where is he? Make us a god that we can see and worship.”
“OK,"Aaron said.”Take off your gold earrings and bring them to me.”

So the people did as Aaron asked. Aaron took all the gold earrings, melted them down and molded them into a golden calf.

 The Hebrews got all excited and shouted. “Oh Israel! These are the gods that brought you out from slavery in Egypt!” We can think to ourselves how stupid the Israelites (Hebrews) were, but we do the same thing. If we are trusting God for something, and He takes too long, we lie, cheat or steal to make it happen. Part of trusting God is waiting on Him. God is never too late. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

 When Aaron saw how happy the people were with their new god, he built and altar in front of the Golden calf. “Tomorrow is Golden Calf God day! Let’s party! (Mr. BibleHead translation)
So the next day the Israelites party like their was no tomorrow. They were getting rowdy, dancing like sinners and getting drunk.
Then God said to Moses. “You better go back down the mountain. The people that you led out of Egypt are out of control. They have made a new god out of gold.
 Don’t we do that sometimes too. We think more about money or things than about God.  When we trust in our money or things to meet our needs, we are making a god out of gold. So we learned a couple things today.
(1) We have the Holy Spirit living inside us. (If we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior)
(2) Waiting on God is trusting in Him.  (Don’t sin to get what we want.)   (Isaiah 40:31)
(3) We can’t make money and things our god. (Keep God first, He’ll take care of us) (Mt 6:24)

Ten Commandments....bad news and good news

 OK, last time we discussed how God gave us the Ten Commandments and how they were for our own good and for our safety. There is another reason, which takes us to the bad news and the good news.
 First the bad news. When we break a single commandment, no matter how big or how small, it separates us from God. Breaking a commandment it is “sin.” God is a holy God and heaven is a holy place. Sin is like a stain.(Isaiah 1:18) Heaven is so clean, that any stain can’t be allowed or it wouldn’t be a clean and holy place. No matter how much good we do, the stain is still there.

 Let’s say that the Ten Commandments are like ten dollars that your mom gave you and your brother to go to the movies. The movie ticket costs ten dollars. On the way to the theater, you see the ice cream truck and buy some ice cream for a dollar. When you get to the ticket window at the theater, the ticket seller says that you can’t buy a ticket with only nine dollars. The movie is ready to start! You offer her your bracelet or the little doll that you have in your pocket. No matter how valuable those things are to you, you still can’t get in. We have to be perfect to get into heaven.

 More bad news.... no one has ever lived the perfect life and not broken a commandment, except Jesus. Have you ever lied, taken anything that wasn’t yours or disobeyed your parents? I have. That means that we are NOT perfect. The bible says that “everyone has sinned and fallen short of heaven.”(Romans 3:23)
 That’s enough bad news. How about some good news? There are four books of the Bible about the life of Jesus. They are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They are called the Gospels. Did you know that gospel means “good news!” Jesus is our good news!  Let’s go back to our movie ticket story. Jesus lived the perfect life. He bought all the movie tickets for everyone in the whole world! Jesus wants to give us a ticket into heaven, but we have to come to Him. What does it mean to come to Him. We have to believe that He is the son of God. That He lived a sinless life. That He died on the cross to pay a price that I could not pay because I have sinned. And that He rose from the dead on the third day.

The Ten Commandments show us how we have failed and how much we need Jesus!

 Without Jesus we are in big trouble when we die. If we think that we can be good enough to get into heaven, we are fooling ourselves. Let’s say that the Ten Commandments are like a chain and each link is one of the commandments. You are hanging onto the chain above a lake of fire. You are not too worried because the chain is strong and it is hoisting you to safety.

But if even one of those links breaks, the whole chain is broken. If you tell a little lie or disobey your parents, the link breaks and you begin to fall. Who can save us from that lake of fire? Only Jesus.

The bible says to “cry out to Jesus!”  He will SAVE us.(Psalm 37:17)  If we choose with our heart to make Jesus our Lord and Savior. He will save us.  What does Lord and Savior mean?  Lord means that we follow Jesus. He is sitting on the throne of our hearts. While we are on this earth, we get to know Him and what He wants us to do. Savior is about when we die. Jesus stands before God and says, “Father, his or her price has been paid.” We are then allowed to spend forever in heaven.
 Do you want to go to heaven when you die? Wouldn’t it be great to know that you will be spending eternity with Jesus? You can be sure. Do you believe that Jesus died for you? Do you believe that He rose from the dead? Do you believe that He is God’s son? Are you ready to follow Jesus? Do you realize that you have sinned and that you need Jesus? The bible says to "confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and you will be saved.”(Romans 10:9) Confess means to say out loud, so if you really, really, really believe this with all your heart, say this prayer.
 God, I admit that I am a sinner. I believe that Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life and died for my sins. I confess now that Jesus in now the Lord of my life and my Savior. Thank you God for Jesus and thank you for saving me. Amen.

 If you prayed that prayer and meant it with all your heart, guess what? You are going to heaven! The Bible says that every time someone is saved, the angels throw a big party in heaven!