10-19-25 - The Lord Was Angry Enough With Aaron To Destroy Him

After what's been quite a hiatus, it feels like, we're back to Deuteronomy nine. We are gonna be studying Moses account of Israel at Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb, where they received the 10 commandments. This is also where they rebelled against the Lord and made a golden calf and worshiped it. And so that is the the substance of Moses retelling is their rebellion. And how God dealt with them, how Moses dealt with them, the sort of the details surrounding that.

The title of the sermon is, they have quickly turned aside. That phrase comes up twice in our passage referring to the Israelites. I want to say to you now, that's grace. And that's what we're going to be studying. This is a sort of thing, this sort of interaction.

We would be well served to learn to see these things in our lives so that we'll live humbly before our job. But you please stand now as you read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter eight verses or Deuteronomy chapter nine verses eight through 12. Or a Horab, you provoked the Lord to wrath. And the Lord was so angry with you that he would have destroyed. When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant, which the Lord had made with you.

Ate bread nor drank water. The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written by the finger of God. And on them were all of the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. It came about at the end of forty days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone. The tablets of the Then the Lord said to me, Arise.

Go down from here quickly for your people whom you brought out of Egypt had acted corrupt. Quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made a mold image for themselves. Laura, it's both further to me saying, I have seen this people and indeed it is a stubborn people. Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven.

And I will make you a nation mightier and greater than their. And and I will make you a nation mightier and greater than they. So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf.

You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded. I took hold of the two tablets and I threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes. I fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days in forty days. Your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. I was afraid of the anger and the hot displeasure with which the

Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you.

But the Lord listened you in order to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me that time. Laura was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. So I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. The calf which 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 its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.

This is the word of the Lord. Thank you, God. You may be seated. Commandments at the base of Mount Sinai or in this passage, Mount Horr. And even before they had left that mountain, they provoked the Lord to wrath.

I'm going to start by talking a little bit about wrath. Wrath is not something that it's not a word we use very often. It's not the sort of thing that we're we kind of have some concept of it, but it's not something we think about a lot. And so I want to start by saying wrath is the righteous is a righteous holy anger that brings about destruction. We see this numerous times just in our passage.

It says that the Lord was so angry with you that he would have destroyed. And Aaron, it says, the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy. People and indeed it is a stubborn people. Let me alone that I may destroy them. And finally, I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger.

And I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you. And so four times just in this passage, the Lord's anger is kindled, and it provokes him to destroying those who have turned away from him. He said, let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their their name from under heaven, and I will make you a nation mightier and greater than they. Now, I want to explain to you a little bit of the significance of this. Okay?

What is it that the Lord is proposing in this moment? He's proposing that their violation of, like, the the covenant made with Abraham and with Isaac and Jacob, you realize that I will make you a nation, is exactly what he promised to Abraham. Agree agree agree agree that the Lord is saying, I'm gonna be done with them. Speaking this way, and I should also say that this section this this description in Deuteronomy leave Moses leaves out large sections of the interaction that went on. He mentions in passing that he had prayed for them.

But we'll come to it later in Exodus what some of his prayers were. But what we're seeing and what Moses is aiming to to communicate to us both in Deuteronomy as well as in Exodus was how angry and wrathful the Lord was toward their sins. There really is a danger in walking around thinking that God is just kind of upset or a little disappointed. When that is not at all what is going on here. This is not he's kind of upset.

They could have done a little bit better. If they could have a do over, they probably succeed the second time. Story we have is that the destruction that is deserved is often very removed from the often very removed from the action. It's a story. It's a story.

It's a story. It's a story. It's a story. It's a story. It's a story.

It's a story. It step back and say, I don't want to get struck by lightning. When you, you know, when the Lord strikes you down. But we say it in jest because we've never seen that sort of quick response to And the danger is that because there's a delay, judgment isn't really deserved or isn't really coming. And that's an error.

That's a that's a that's harmful to us because what it does is it makes room in our hearts and in our minds, give ourselves to sin without having the connection between the actions that we're committing and the consequences they deserve. We think we can live and act with impunity. Nothing, nothing will really come. That's how we think, but that's not how God thinks. Repeatedly in this passage, he is provoked to anger and to wrath that he might destroy them.

He says to Moses, let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. Take them away. And that will make you a nation mightier and greater than they do. The Lord is holy. And holiness is required for wrath.

It is what's set in juxtaposition to the sin. The Lord is holy. And he does hate sin. And his holiness and his hatred of sin require that those who give themselves to sin be destroyed. Now this is not often what we're taught regarding God.

We're taught that he's gracious, that he's merciful, that he's forgiving, that he's long suffering, that he's things I have just said previously about his holiness and his wrath and his righteousness are not in any way opposed to his mercy and his kindness and his his, grace. Was was evil, was wicked, was rebellious, and they deserved to be destroyed. I then want to come right to you and ask, is that what the Lord did? Did he destroy them? Angry, and he's this holy, and he's this righteous, why didn't he destroy them?

But if we don't have that context, if we don't lean into and understand his holiness and his righteousness and his his burning anger, it's then his grace just

becomes then

his grace just becomes And so even in this passage, if you look at what the Lord says, if you look at what is you find that God is being very gracious to these people.

If you were

there, on If you were there on that day, do you think you would have contributed gold? It's not a I don't mean it to be a rhetorical question where it's like, well, obviously and clearly I wouldn't have or obviously and clearly I would have. I mean, just for you to consider for a moment, if you were there among the people of God at the base of the mountain, having just covenanted with him to be his people and to obey all that he commanded. And then Moses went away up into the fire quaking mountain for a month or so. Would you have contributed gold?

It's interesting to note that no one here is is, acknowledged as having not contributed gold. We're also not told that every single person did. Sort of he tries to lessen his guilt, and he fails to do so. But it seems to be that the consensus among the people of God at that time was to contribute gold and to make And the second commandment. A month or so may you know, we don't know exactly when they did it in the forty days that Moses was up on the mountain, like how long it took.

But at some point within a month or so of them committing themselves to serving and obeying God, being given these 10 commandments, they've just wandered away from all of it and are doing Egypt. And you see this as a recurring theme as they're out in the wildernesses and as they're wandering around, they want to go back to Egypt. They want to at least we had meat in our pot. At least we had water to drink. They also had were the gods of the of of the and that's what they're doing here.

They're doing what they've learned. This bull, in fact, if you were to if you were to dig into it, is is is it hearkens back to one of the Egyptian gods. How do you come up with a golden calf? Like, where does that come from? Why not a why not a goat?

Why not a sheep? Why not a horse? Tell him to go away. We can't abide his power and his fury. They've forgotten.

And and then And then and then and then and then and then and then and then It seems kind of implausible, doesn't it? Like, it's a little there's fire and quaking and thunder and and don't touch the mountain or you're going to die. Keep the animals away. Sufficient explanation. So what do we learn about the condition of man?

If it wasn't for today. Stand in the presence of God with all with his power on display. Him that in that context, he will make an idol. Would any of us cop to doing that kind of thing? Now you might want to argue and say, well, I don't think they were Christians.

Then why didn't God destroy them? I'm not arguing that they were all Christians or that they were all saved, but they were at that time.

The only people of God

in the whole world, the only people of God in the whole world. And so at least some of them were Christians, believers, whatever you want to call it, Old Testament believers. Gold, and they worshiped, and they did it right, right at the doorstep of God. That is a picture into the depravity of our own hearts, and our neighbors hearts and our spouses hearts. And I don't know that any of us think people are really that bad.

I mean, it's an incredible thing. Here's an example. You who have a little Yeah, a family meeting, you call them in, you say, guys, no throwing balls, No hitting each other. No running in the house. Wash your hands.

Clean up the toys. We're gonna have dinner in five minutes. I'm gonna go take a shower. And you all know the punch line. Right?

What do the kids do as soon as you leave?

They hit

each other. They hit each other. All of a sudden you're like upstairs and you hear, right? You know, downstairs, mine! You know, you're like I just, I just told them.

And no sooner did I get out of sight. Then they did exactly what I told them not to do. Of the One other explanation is it. Did you not speak clearly to your kids? Are they two did they just forget?

Did they did you have their little eyeballs looking at you just two minutes a day? And and what did I tell you? And they repeat back to you, this is what you told me to do. And I'm and then you walk away. And and up.

Right? Because that is what the depravity of man produces. Now we can kind of chuckle at the example of our kids, though we don't chuckle when it happens. Right? Anger, destruction.

So we learn a helpful lesson about man's condition. Israel had swore allegiance and obedience to the Lord. In less than a month, they've abandoned him and returned to the gods of the Egyptians in his presence. The only explanation we can offer for such foolishness is the depravity of man. Great on the earth and that the intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Was that only true before the flood? Did the flood cleanse that that that corruption from man's heart? Was depravity somehow remedied in some way by the flood? Is that where we've started from? Are those the weeds that grow in our hearts still today and compete with the spirit of Yeah.

Or Romans three, Paul argues this way. This is verses five through 18. He says, If our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous is he? And for other wise, how will God judge the world?

But For otherwise, how will God judge the world? But if through my lie, the truth of God abounded to his glory, why am I also still being judged to sin? Why not say, let us do evil that good may come? You see, he's taking the delay of God's judgment and his wrath and saying, if God delays, why don't we just do what we want? So that he'll work he'll he so he has fodder to work his goodwill Let us do evil that good may and then Paul cuts to the chase.

He says, their condemnation is just And he's talking about the comparison between the Jews and the Gentiles. Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin as it is. There is none righteous, not even one.

There is no one who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned to aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good.

There's not even one. Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Who I ask you, does that describe? Description? Now, Timothy doesn't like when I say this.

He told me last time I read Romans three. He says, I think you're You remember telling me that? You didn't like me saying that this was true. No. I that's what we said last time.

Oh, so you agree with me this time? Yes. Okay. So I prevailed upon my brother. Because I haven't changed my mind.

I said something different. Maybe it was

your fault.

Yes. My point in bringing this up is the same point that Paul had in bringing it up, it just makes you squirm in your seat. If it lands on you at all, And so this is Christ, this is still where we came. And when you become a Christian, all of this doesn't cease in an instant to fall away from It begins to die, because God begins to die, because God begins to And you're given a new heart, and your desires are changed over time. But this is where we start.

This is where we are. This is what brings them to make a golden calf at the How else, like, you explain it. The stupidity of it. It's like, would you please just strike me dead? Is what they're saying by their Their hearts were desperately sick, and it is this fact that led them to forsake God and to make the golden calf.

They did not act in ignorance. They were still in the presence of God waiting for Moses to come down. Who made it. Aaron says in Exodus, this is chapter 32 verses twenty three and twenty four. Aaron is he is he is grabbing Israelites with both hands and trying to throw them under the bus.

Like he is pulling with all his might to be like, it was their they said to me, make a god for us, who will go before us for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt. We do not know what is become of him. I said to them, whoever has any gold, let them tear it off. So they gave it to me, and I threw it in the fire, and out came this chaos. I think you threw it and broke it.

I think once it broke, you stomped on it.

There's no escape. The foolishness, the

wickedness of what they had done. The the foolishness, the wickedness of what they had done. The depravity of man, as we see in this passage, is something that we need to recover and apply to our lives. Something we need to see is true about ourselves apart from hard to imagine doing what they did, it's hard to imagine doing what they did, it that God mercifully and graciously didn't give it to you. And you're like, you know who I am now.

I looked in a mirror and I, and I saw something. I didn't want to see. And it's And and not destroyed me. Though I tried to destroy my grace and has brought me to this point. And if he doesn't keep me, continue to keep me, it won't be long until I have a golden calf of mine.

And on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. These tablets are also called the tablets of the covenant. They referred to it, I think, three times in this passage. The tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. The tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.

And so if we're looking for a reason as to why they didn't why God didn't destroy these people who deserved destruction, to this point, we've looked at all of their disobedience. And on those tablets were written their obligations, their terms of the covenant. 10 We were looking at what they were to do. But God promised things to them that were not written down on those tablets, but God had obligated himself to these. If you will serve me, and if you will obey me,

and do all that I command

you, what does he promise to them? I and do all that I command you, what does he promise to them? I will be your God. And so what you see here is God being faithful to a covenant that they broke in a matter of weeks. He has owned them as his people.

He owned them when he called them in Abraham. And though he speaks to Moses as though he would destroy them and start over, enduring faithfulness to keep his word and to do what he says. And so he writes down what's required of them. He gives it to Moses. Moses comes down the mountain.

And what does Moses do with them? Smashes them. Now here's an interesting question. If Moses was kept out of the promised land for striking the rock with his staff in anger, you remember? Par.

Right? Like, you were angry and you struck the rock for water because the people were threatening to kill you. But here you saw that they made a golden calf and you smashed the tablets written by the hand of God himself and there's no consequence for it. It's kind of a it seems like a detail that ought to be addressed. It forces us to ask the question, was Moses wrong to smash the tablets?

Or was it appropriate for him to smash the tablets? So what do you think? We're all sitting here kinda going, well, I think it might have been right for him to smash the tablets. Why was it then then the question is why was it right for him to smash the tablets? And here's the answer.

Disregarded what was written on them. They'd already forsaken God. And so when he took those tablets, and what he says is he took them in his hands. I'll find it. I don't have that part written here.

And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf, and you turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord God had commanded you. I took hold of the two tablets, threw them from my hands, and smashed them before your eyes. Lord. First forty days in nights.

I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all your sin which you had committed and doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and the hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you. And so he spent forty days in terms of like times and intensity. He spent forty days up on the mountain either eating or drinking with the Lord God. Calvin says that he left his mortal estate because we can't go forty days and forty nights without drinking naturally.

And so then he comes and he says, when you when you when I came down and saw for with my own eyes that what the Lord told me you had done, I saw that you had actually done. I took the tablets. And again, as at the first forty days and forty nights of fasting, and So now eighty days, almost back to back with no food and no water for moses. He took their sin seriously. He petitioned God for them.

That's the that's the final final part here is he's he says he says, I, but the Lord listened to me at that time also after he had, was afraid and after he broke the tablets and he fell down and he fasted. He said, but the Lord listened to me at this time also. And so you have this idea that, like, there's this prayer, this interaction going on with Moses. He's interceding on behalf of the people with God. He's petitioning God to be faithful to his covenant, to his promises to these people to not destroy them.

In Exodus 30 two:eleven through 14, it says, this is one of Moses' interactions, his prayers. He says, Moses entreated the Lord as God, and he

said, oh, Lord. Why does your anger burn against

your people? It's an interesting because the Why does your anger burn against your people? It's interesting. Because in Exodus, Moses is like your people, your people, your people. But did you notice in our passage what God said about the people?

Who did he who did he attribute owners? He said, Moses, you led these people, your people. Moses is reminding, no, they're not my people. They're your people.

You've promised. And so, Moses is reminding, no, they're not my people. They're your people. You've promised. And so,

Moses is reminding, no, they're not my people. They're your people. You've promised. And so, why does your anger burn against your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak?

With evil intent, he, the Lord, brought them, the Israelites, out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth. Turn from your burning anger and change your mind about doing harm to your people. Your stories to whom you swore by yourself and said to them, I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the in all the of which I have spoken. I will give to your descendants. And they shall inherit it forever.

So the Lord changed his mind about the harm which he said he would do to his people. And so Moses is interceding in great fear with long fasting, that God might be faithful to his word. Do we pray that way when there's sin? We don't pray that way when there's sin in our lives or in the lives of the people we're responsible for if we don't take sin seriously in the first place. Right after that he says the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him.

So I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. Moses prayed hard and he fasted hard for another forty days because he took their sins seriously. He didn't just brush it off in a moment. If we go back to that analogy with our kids when we step away. When you come back into the room and you say to them, what did you do?

And they say, well, you know, and you get you get this the Erin story. Well, Do Do you have confidence that they won't be back at this in ten minutes or the next day? Oftentimes, they're right back at it. Why? Because they didn't take none of us, none of us, including the parents, took their sin seriously enough.

You may have yelled at them or manipulated them or threatened them for ten minutes, but you didn't spank them. You should've, but you didn't. Many times we don't. We think if we just reprimand them and tell them how dissatisfied we are with them and threaten them, they can't have this or go do that or whatever, that that'll fix the problem. But we never actually disciplined them for it.

We just manipulate them for it. And then we're surprised when they do it again. Their sin is not being dealt with. It's not being taken seriously by them or by their parents. I'll give you an example outside of parenting that's, I think historically, it's not unique, but I think in our day and age, it's fairly unique.

The elders of a church have authority over the Lord's Supper, right? We invite people to come. We also tell people when they can't. And we don't take that, that, responsibility lightly. We don't exercise that authority flippantly.

And it'll be a grievous sin and a sin that's been going on for a long time. But they come not because they were caught but because they were convicted and they confess their sins and they say this is what I did. Committing adultery. I've been stealing. I've you fill in the blank.

But they come, and they confess their sins, and they're grieved over it. And they're sorry for

their sins. But they've been doing

it for three years. Let's say should the elders do? What often will happen is we'll, we'll talk, we'll ask questions, we'll After having come of their own free will and the work of God, they've come and confessed their sins. We say, we don't think that you ought to take a communion for a period of of step with the way things should be. Isn't it all said and done and over now that they've confessed their sins?

No, not always. Because what we're forgetting is that there were those three years where they took communion every week. For all those years, they never took it seriously. They never felt it. They never, they never dealt with it.

And now that they've dealt with it, we're supposed to go it's over. That situation is and this is not something that's ever made known to the congregation. We don't stand up and tell you, and Bill can't take communion because he confessed to adultery last week. But what often will happen is that period of time will be they'll be barred from the table and there will be particular effort from one or more of the elders in meeting with them and talking with them. And the goal being to resensitize them and to understand

more fully the sin that they committed. That it wasn't just the adultery,

but it was the hiding of the adultery. It was the That it wasn't just the adultery, but it was the hiding of the adultery. It was the lying to cover it up. It was the harm that it caused to their marriage and these other things. It wasn't just the act.

It was years of of destruction that now has to we have to we can't just walk past that like none of those things are going on. You would understand that the wife wouldn't immediately trust her husband again. Right? There would be some rebuilding of trust. And so we say because of the insensitivity toward your sin for this this period of time, we think it would be good to resensitize you to the the gravity of what's going on.

Okay? And that's an example of taking this in seriously. A Christian. That is not you are not welcome here. That is we can't believe you did that.

That is not we're gonna go tell everybody about it. It's none of those things. It's simply taking this in seriously and realizing that if we just cover over it quickly and act like everything's fine, it's likely to happen more likely to happen. And so we take this in seriously. We say we want to see you resensitize to it.

You've been eating unworthily for years. And we need to we need some time to process through that. And so it's been a lot to be taken seriously. It ought to be, dealt with. Moses spends forty days not eating and not drinking, praying hard that God would be faithful to his word and not to consume.

And in the example I gave you with regard to the Lord's Table, the thing nobody wants to say is you've done this once. The propensity of you doing it again, the likelihood of it is higher than if you had never done it. And we're going to take that seriously. That's not always what we do. Sometimes we don't do that.

Sometimes we do do that. It it depends on the circumstances And the conviction of the Holy Spirit as it as it as he works through the situation with us. But the goal is we want to take this in seriously as to prevent it from happening again. Compare that with a little kid who's having problems and you're like, I told you, I told you, you can't this and that, and you walk away. And we're doing it again tomorrow.

Or next Or ten minutes. Seriously. He takes God's holiness very seriously. So we ought to be like Moses and being sensitive to God's holiness in our sinfulness. Into a powder and then in Deuteronomy, it says that he threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.

But if you go read in Exodus, he made them drink the water. It was their source of water at that time. And so he's ground it all up, thrown it in into the in there, and then he's made them to drink it. Now, be. How that He's pushing them to realize what they've done.

It's not just taken away. It's burnt up. All of the wealth, this is largely the wealth some of the wealth they've taken out of. It's been destroyed and now they're being made to partake of it, to eat it, to taste its bitterness and its foulness. So that they and the whole goal is that they might remember and not do it.

A day. Now is that gracious? Gracious thing to do. That seems like a really hard nosed, mean, It's gratious to be warned, to be reminded, to be impressed upon, that we might avoid our sins. And that is what it takes many times.

It takes it takes real pressure for us to feel and to flee from our sins. And that's what's going on in this and so it ought to be part of our lives. We ought not to be stiff necked and rebellious to it. I think God was very gracious to them in this. And we would do well to be this gracious with each with each other.

Astroneer rises. Let's pray.