Knowing God 16—God's Nature—Exodus 32-34

1 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 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? (Exodus 32:1–11, ESV)

1 The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. 2 Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. 3 No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.” 4 So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. 5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” 8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. 9 And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” 10 And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you." (Exodus 34:1–10, ESV)

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Things could not have been going much better. After over 400 years in Egypt, God's people were now free. Through the plagues, the blood of the Passover lamb, and the waters of the Red Sea, Yahweh had rescued them. And, just as he had promised Moses at the burning bush, they had come to God's mountain to hear God's voice. There, he invited these descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to enter into a marriage-like covenant with him so that they could be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation to the world—and they responded with a resounding yes! Three days later, they gathered at the base of Mt. Sinai, and God spoke the Ten Commandments to them, following it up with hundreds of more specific laws in the Book of the Covenant. He promised to go before them into the land where they would build their home and holy nation. When the Hebrews heard these words from Yahweh, they accepted them and ratified the covenant with blood sacrifice.

Then Moses went up to the top of the mountain to be alone in God's presence for forty days. During that time, God gave Moses the plans for the tabernacle system he would use to dwell among his people and also wrote the Ten on tablets of stone. God told Moses to receive an offering of all the materials needed for God's house. He told Moses about all the furniture that would be inside and outside his house—an altar of sacrifice and a basin for washing were on the outside, while a lampstand, table, and altar of incense were on the inside. And in the innermost room would be an ark of the covenant where God promised he would meet with Israel. Then Yahweh gave Moses plans for Israel's priesthood: Aaron and his descendants would serve the people by offering sacrifices, leading prayers, and interacting with God on their behalf. Israel would be God's special people gathered at his tent to commune with him—a holy nation and kingdom of priests centered on Yahweh. It was beautiful.

But as their forty days on the mountain drew to a close, Yahweh told Moses what was happening in the valley below—Aaron and the people were undoing nearly every element of the covenant God had created. While Moses received the tabernacle plans and the two tablets, Israel wondered if he would ever return (32:1). As Moses' absence neared the six-week mark, the people demanded something tangible to worship and told Aaron to make them gods who would go before them (32:1). Aaron made them a golden calf which he said brought them out of Egypt and they worshiped it (32:1-4). The next day, he added to the confusion by proclaiming a feast to Yahweh, which became only another day to sacrifice to the golden calf and engage in community-wide orgiastic celebrations before their new false god (32:5-8).

Needless to say, God was angry. It is this anger we are going to consider today. But I am going to drive this episode beyond the cliffhanger of God's wrath to its conclusion, lest I fail to give the entire picture of who God is. At the end of this story, after hearing Moses' mediative voice, God reveals his truest nature and how much he loves these golden calf worshippers. We are not to think of God as an abusive husband, but a brokenhearted one. We are not to think of him as a raging father, but one who cares deeply for his children.

And though Israel broke their covenant with him down in that valley, he restored that covenant and brought them right back into his plans. So, though there is a ton we could draw from these three chapters, we are going to restrain ourselves to three questions. First, what angers God? Second, what is God truly like? Third, how can we experience that God?

1. What Angers God? (32:1-11)

First, what angers God? Perhaps even the question makes you feel uncomfortable. Perhaps you don't want to think of God as capable of anger, feeling, or wrath. But, in our passage, God clearly said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I make consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you" (32:9-10).

I know some read words like these and want to immediately jump in the that's-the-Old-Testament-God-escape-pod. But you just can't go there. First, the Old Testament is our Bible, too. Second, the New Testament reaffirms God's anger. For instance, at the beginning of Romans, Paul said, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth" (Rom. 1:18).

There are no exegetical ninja skills I can apply here to soften these sentences. I can't tell you that words like "wrath," "burn hot," and "consume" are actually the Hebrew words for deep care, warm feelings, and snuggle time. And I hesitate to obfuscate with a five-dollar word like "anthropomorphism" as a way to say this is merely human language applied to the divine. The simple and straightforward answer is best: God was angry. God did not act out on that anger, but he did tell his friend Moses all about it; some say he was processing his feelings and bringing his man into his pathos.[^1] Moses then appealed to God on multiple levels. God responded by declaring his nature before restoring his people. He loved the golden calf worshippers in the valley below.

But we often get too tripped up by the fact God can be angry to ask just what it is that angers him. Somehow, along the way, we came to think God should be a stoic, unemotional, detached being.[^2] But he isn't—what good father doesn't care about his children and their actions? God has decided it is worth his time to invest himself in rescuing his people and fighting for a restoration of all that was lost in Eden, and it angers him when something undoes his restorative work. That is what is happening in this passage. God is not snapping because someone said a swear or thought a lustful thought. God is not lashing out because someone watched a movie they shouldn't have or broke the speed limit. God isn't acting out as a cosmic killjoy who hates seeing the good times his people are having down in the valley.

God is angry because while he had been recreating the Garden of Eden, they were destroying it.[^3] Right when God was in the middle of telling them how he would dwell tangibly in their midst (as in Eden), they break the covenant.

• While he told Moses to collect various elements, including gold, for the tabernacle and its elements, they were using that gold to make a calf for their licentious forms of worship.
• While he explained a tabernacle system that would create a point of contact between him and his people, they were creating a competing point of contact with a false idol. While he detailed the altar and the annual festivals to Moses, they were building their own altar and engaging in their own festival.
• While he described the holy Aaronic priesthood that would help keep the nation's eyes on God, Aaron acted as a false priest who drew them away from God.
• And they were undoing all the commandments down in that valley. Other gods, making idols, disrespecting leaders, engaging in sexual sin—they were a runaway train rebelling against the entire covenant they had just made with God.

This was the cataclysmic rejection of the beautiful covenant God had just spent hundreds of years building. They were like a new bride committing adultery on her honeymoon.

So what angers God is when his people go into self-destroy mode to rage against the beautiful destiny he has spent so much to build for them. He was angry with them because of his intense love for them—and by the end of this passage, he will recommit to them and restore them back to the covenant—but it grieved his Fatherly heart to see them settling for something so cheap and dehumanizing when they could have waited for his true presence and glory to dwell among them. It broke his heart to see them debasing themselves for so much less than what he was going to give them for free.

I recently spoke with a teenage girl who had gone to her first high school sporting event with cheerleaders at it. I asked her what she thought of them. She said she liked them but that they sure spelled out lots of stuff—V-I-C-T-O-R-Y, that's our team's battle cry! Well, this passage presents God spelling out the stuff of his heart. Embedded in the Ten was the statement, "I the LORD your God am a jealous God" (Ex. 20:5). And at the end of this passage, God will declare himself to be a jealous God (Ex. 34:14). He wants to be exclusive with us. He craves us for himself because he knows he's the only God who will not hurt us. What angers him are things that degrade us and distance us from him, things that take us out of relational closeness with him and marital faithfulness to him.

2. What is God Like? (34:1-35)

Second, what is God like? This question is the reason I wanted to cover the entire Exodus 32-34 episode at one time. If we only focused on God's response to the golden calf in Exodus 32, we might miss God's truest depiction of himself to Moses in Exodus 34. But to find out what God is like so that we might know him best, we need the last segment of this episode.

From the tent, Moses uttered three prayers to Yahweh. Moses' first request was that God would reveal himself more fully—he felt unsure of God's plans after the golden calf incident. God had told him that his angel would go with him into the Promised Land, but Moses wanted more details (Ex. 32:34, 33:2). So he said, "Show me now your ways, that I make know you in order to find favor in your sight" (Ex. 33:13). God responded, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest" (Ex. 33:14).

But Moses wanted confirmation, so he made a second request: "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here" (Ex: 33:15). He had no interest in going to the Promised Land without Yahweh. He loved Sinai, the commandments, the law, and the covenant. He looked forward to the worship of the tabernacle. But would it even happen now that Israel had worshiped a golden calf of their own making? God said, "This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight" (Ex. 33:17). God would go with them.

With that, Moses blurted out his final prayer: "Please show me your glory" (Ex. 33:18). Moses wanted to see God. Yahweh responded, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ But you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live. Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen" (Ex. 33:19-23). In some way, God was going to show Moses the afterglow of his glory and declare his name to his man.

So, in the morning, Moses cut two replacement tablets of stone and went up Sinai—alone—for the seventh time (Ex. 34:1-4). Yahweh descended on the mountain in the cloud and proclaimed his name to Moses (Ex. 34:5). It is the most quoted bible passage in the Bible, which ought to tell us something about its importance. It is God's description of himself. So, what is God like?

God is merciful (Ex. 34:6). It's a word that indicates compassion. It's a word that is related to the word womb—God felt like a mother relating to her rebellious teenager. Who is God merciful towards? Who does God feel compassion toward? Who does God care for? Golden calf worshippers.

God is gracious (Ex. 34:6). He bestows favor and blessing. On who? Golden calf worshippers.

God is slow to anger (Ex. 34:6). You can make him mad, but it takes a long time to do so. Other gods are capricious, but Yahweh is longsuffering towards golden calf worshippers.

God is abounding in steadfast love (Ex. 34:6). This means he is loyal in a superabundant way to those golden calf worshippers in the valley below.

God is abounding in faithfulness (Ex. 34:6). This speaks of Yahweh's authenticity, his integrity, and his dependability. Who is he faithful to? Golden calf worshippers.

God keeps steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and sin (Ex. 34:7). His loyalty extends to thousands—or a thousand generations according to Deuteronomy 7:9. Yahweh would forgive and clear these golden calf worshippers.

God, however, will by no means clear the guilty (Ex. 34:7). In other words, God's disposition is to forgive those guilty of sin, but the fact remains that not everyone accepts that forgiveness, so they remain in their guilt for their sin. And sin must be addressed. God is just, so it is impossible for offenses to bang around the cosmos without eventual payment. Without this final statement, all that came before it—mercy, grace, patience, love, and forgiveness—"might be considered mere leniency."[^4] God's love, however, is not toothless permissiveness, but radical grace toward golden calf worshippers who want it. Though God is forgiving and loving, his grace is not a sloppy dish of cheap or spineless love. He says he visits sin to the third and fourth generations, but that he is prone to dispense grace to thousands of generations—far covering the generations visited because of their sin. For every generation of golden calf worshippers, there is a way out!

His self-revelation to Moses was complete, so God heard one final prayer from Moses for Israel, pivoted, and said, "Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people, I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you" (Ex. 34:10). After that statement, he reiterated the covenant he had invited Israel into. He had listened to Moses' prayers. He had declared his true nature. And now he was ready to get back to what he was doing before the golden calf incident. He moved on. It was covenant time. He was ready to move forward with these golden calf worshippers, just as he is ready to move forward with us.

3. How Can We Experience that God? (32:12-33:23)

Third—and finally—how can we experience that God? Throughout the passage, it is clear that Moses stood between God and the people—and that God was moved by his man. I believe Moses was merely drawing out God's truest nature, speaking and interceding in a way that provided God an avenue to beautifully declare his wonderful character—and for Israel to experience that character. But how did Moses do this? What did Moses do and say? What attributes did he have that moved God? Why did God hear his voice?

First, Moses was a mediator who spoke with God—he interceded for Israel, reminded God of his promises, and met with God daily in a temporary tent of meeting (32:11-13, 33:7-11).

Second, Moses was a mediator who spoke to the people—he threw the tablets to the ground, ground the golden calf into powder, confronted Aaron, and disciplined the people (32:14-35).

Third, Moses, at the center of this whole episode, offered himself instead of the people. After rebuking the people, the next day, Moses went back to God and offered to die in their place if that's what it took for them to be forgiven (32:32). God rejected Moses' offer by saying, "Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book" (32:33). Then he told Moses to go lead the people into the Promised Land and that only his angel would go with them there (32:34).

The lesson here isn't to be like Moses. The true lesson is to find a mediator like Moses. Find the one who is so close with the Father that his voice is always heard. Find the one who knows the Father so well he represents him with perfection. Find the one who fully and totally deals with sin. Find the one who invites you into the renewal of repentance. Find the one who has a familial closeness with God. Find the one whose offer to die in our place was accepted by the Father. Find Jesus! He builds a bridge from the Father to us. He translates God the Father's care and concern to us. He takes us to the glory of God's goodness. Find Jesus.

"For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. 2:5)

Even Moses said we should look for Jesus. Forty years later, on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, he told Israel, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen" (Deut. 18:15). Our Lord is that figure, that deliverer, that messenger.

As John said, "From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:16–17). Whose grace and truth? Yahweh's! Through the Son's work on the cross, the Father's love for us had no barrier. The veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom because Jesus' death unleashed the Father's love, and now we can fully know the Lord.

“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, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Ex. 34:6-7)

Study Questions

Head (Knowledge, Facts, Understanding):

1. What specific actions by the Israelites led to God's anger in Exodus 32, and how did these actions violate the covenant they had with God?
2. In Exodus 34, how does God describe His own nature, and how do these attributes relate to His response to the Israelites' actions?
3. How does Moses' intercession for the Israelites in Exodus 32-33 exemplify his role as a mediator between God and His people?

Heart (Feelings, Impressions, Desires):

4. How does the concept of God being "slow to anger" in Exodus 34:6 impact your understanding of His character and patience?
5. Reflect on the emotions you might feel if you were among the Israelites during this incident. How would you react to God's judgment and subsequent mercy?
6. In what ways do the events of Exodus 32-34 challenge or affirm your personal feelings about justice, mercy, and forgiveness?

Hands (Actions, Commitments, Decisions, Beliefs):

7. Considering the Israelites' idolatry and God's response, what practical steps can you take to avoid modern forms of idolatry in your own life?
8. How can Moses' example of intercession and leadership influence your approach to spiritual leadership or mentorship in your community?
9. What specific commitments can you make to better reflect God’s attributes of mercy, grace, and steadfast love in your daily interactions?

[^1]: In a private lecture by Dr. Gerry Breshears, 2023.

[^2]: Heschel, Abraham J. 2023. The Prophets. New York, NY: Harper.

[^3]: Enns, Peter E. 2000. Exodus. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[^4]: Ortlund, Dane C. 2021. Gentle and Lowly. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, p. 149.