January 30, 2026 - Exodus 32-34
The golden calf. Who doesn’t know about the golden calf? What a debacle this was as Aaron, the high priest of all people, led the people to build an idol from gold! The Lord saw, and he sent Moses down the mountain to see. The Lord said, “’They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it’ . . . And the LORD said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people’” (32:8-9). The Lord’s intention was to destroy the people but Moses interceded, not so much pleading for the people as appealing to God’s great name and reputation: “If you destroy them, the Egyptians will say that you were strong enough to bring them out of Egypt but not strong enough to keep them. What a terrible stain on your great name” (paraphrase). The people left Sinai, and Moses continued to intercede for them. After new law tablets were made (Moses, in anger, had broken the first) the Lord showed himself to Moses, passing before him, and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty” (34:6-7). What a God we have! Able to deliver and to keep. Merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and so much more! Indeed, how great a name is his!
Attend, my soul, the voice divine,
And mark what beaming glories shine
Around thy condescending God!
To us, to us, he still proclaims
his awful, his endearing names;
Attend, and sound them all abroad.
“Jehovah I, the sovereign Lord,
The mighty God, by Heaven adored,
Down to the earth my footsteps bend;
My heart the tenderest pity knows,
Goodness full-streaming wide o’erflows,
And grace and truth shall never end.” --Philip Doddridge (18th century)
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