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 9. We are going to be studying Moses' account of Israel at Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb, where they received the Ten Commandments. This is also where they rebelled against the Lord and made a golden calf and worshipped it. And so that is the substance of Moses' retelling is their rebellion and how God dealt with them, how Moses dealt with them, 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. And so our goal this morning is to examine their turning away from the Lord, as well as how God deals with their turning away. It's interesting to note that he doesn't destroy them as they deserve, but rather that Moses intercedes for them, and as a result, God averts his wrath. I want to say to you now, that's grace. And that's what we're going to be studying this morning.

It's the 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 God. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 9, verses 8 through 21. Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he would have destroyed you. 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, then I remained on the mountain forty days and nights. I neither 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 covenant.

Then the Lord said to me, arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made a molten image for themselves. The Lord spoke 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 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 you. 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 40 days and 40 nights.

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. For 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 to me that time also. The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. So I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. I took your sinful thing. 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. You may be seated. So as I mentioned at the beginning, Moses is retelling the account of them giving the Ten Commandments at the base of Mount Sinai, or in this passage, Mount Horeb. This is where the Mosaic Covenant was instituted.

And even before they had left that mountain, they provoked the Lord to wrath. I want 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 a righteous, holy anger that brings about destruction. We see this numerous times just in our passage, okay? It says that the Lord, Regarding Aaron, it says, 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 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 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. And it's Abraham's descendants who've come to this point and who have now rebelled so frequently, so egregiously that the Lord is saying, I'm gonna be done with them and I'm going to blot them out and I'll start over with you, Moses. This is the intensity of this.

statement is the intensity of the flood, okay? That's how upset the Lord was at this time. I do believe that in speaking this way, and I should also say that this description in Deuteronomy, 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 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 with us, 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'd probably succeed the second time. Their sin, as with all sin, provokes the Lord to anger and brings about destruction. The difficulty we have is that the destruction that is deserved is often very removed from the action itself. You've probably heard or seen somebody jokingly hear someone say, they'll be with somebody and somebody will say something, perhaps blasphemous. And they'll step back and say, I don't want to get struck by lightning when the Lord strikes you down. But we say it in jest because we've never seen that sort of quick response to the offense. And the danger is that because there's a delay, we come to think that the judgment isn't really deserved or isn't really coming.

And that's an error. That's harmful to us because what it does is it makes room in our hearts and in our minds to be able to 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 will really come of it. Meaning also that the things we're doing aren't really that bad. 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 I will make you a nation mightier and greater than they. 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 kind. And I mean to tell you that the 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 grace. They, in fact, are the foundation and the context for which we find those things. Even in this passage, if you believe, yes, what they've done 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? And so we're left with this question, like, if he is this angry, and he's this holy, and he's this righteous, why didn't he destroy them? That's grace. But if we don't have that context, if we don't lean into and understand his holiness and his righteousness and his burning anger at sin, then his grace just becomes empty. We can talk about it, but we're not talking about it as though it saves us from anything or reverts anything away from us.

And so even in this passage, if you look at what the Lord says, if you look at what is true, and then you look at what he does, you find that God is being very gracious to these people. If you were there on that day, do you think you would have contributed gold? 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 acknowledged as having not contributed gold. We're also not told that every single person did.

We'll come to Aaron's explanation of it all. He 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 an idol, which was forbidden in the second commandment a month or so. We don't know exactly when they did it in the 40 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 what they've seen in Egypt. They've gone back in their hearts to Egypt. And you see this as a recurring theme as they're out in the wilderness and as they're wandering around, they want to go back to Egypt. They want to, at least we had meat in our pots. At least we had water to drink.

What they also had were the gods of the Egyptians. And that's what they're doing here. They're doing what they've learned. This bull, in fact, if you were to dig into it, it harkens 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 goat? Why not a sheep? Why not a horse? It harkens back to these Egyptian gods. And so they're doing what was familiar to them. They're doing what they knew. The things that they had just said, the things that they had committed themselves to in the fear of God. Remember, you go talk to him, tell him to go away. We can't abide his power and his fury. They've forgotten all of it. But that's not really a good enough answer, I don't think. If you were there, do you think you could have forgotten? Just forgotten that you were committed. It seems kind of implausible, doesn't it? Like it's a little...

There's fire and quaking and thunder and don't touch the mountain or you're going to die. Keep the animals away too. I forgot what you said about the idols. That doesn't seem to be a sufficient explanation. So what do we learn about the condition of man if it wasn't forgetfulness? I think we learn a very helpful lesson about this depravity of man. That he can stand in the presence of God with his power on display. And he's so depraved. And the fear of God is so far removed from him that in that context, he will make an idol. Would any of us cop to doing that kind of thing? We'd all say, I wouldn't have given gold. I would have been opposed. There's no way I would have. And I'm like, I would love to know what makes you so different than all of these people of God here. 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. And so at least some of them were Christians, believers, whatever you want to call Old Testament believers. Some of them believed in Jesus and they gave 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. Our neighbor's hearts and our spouse's 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 little kids, you have 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 going to have dinner in five minutes. I'm going to go take a shower. And you all know the punchline, right?

What do the kids do as soon as you leave? Huh? They hit each other. All of a sudden you're like upstairs and you hear, ah, right? You know, downstairs. Mine. You're like, I just, I just told them. And no sooner did I get out of sight than they did exactly what I told them not to do. All you're seeing in that moment is the depravity of man. One other explanation is, did you not speak clearly to your kids? Are they too, did they just forget? Did you have their little eyeballs looking at you just two minutes ago? And what did I tell you? And they repeat back to you, this is what you told me to do. And I'm, yup. And then you walk away. And we just threw the gold into the fire and out popped a golden calf. It sounds like something a three-year-old would make 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. Wrath, right? Anger, destruction. It's easy for us to laugh when it's about the kids. And it's also easy for us to put it at a distance when it's the Israelites. But that same thing is true of you and me. We're just that depraved. And 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. The Lord said in Genesis 6, 5, that the Lord saw the wickedness of man was 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 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 God? Or are we something better than all of the people that have gone before us? In Romans 3, Paul argues this way. This is verses 5 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? May it never be. 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 a sinner? 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 he has fodder to work his goodwill is the argument he's making. Let us do evil that good may come. And then Paul cuts to the chase. He says, their condemnation is just. What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. 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 written. There is none righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is 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? Or another way to ask it is, who is exempt from that description? Now, Timothy doesn't like when I say this. He told me last time I read Romans 3. He says, I think you're wrong. You remember telling me that? You didn't like me saying that this was true of Christians. Oh, so you agree with me this time? Okay. 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, which is this is man's condition apart from Christ. This description of the depravity of man in Romans 3, it just makes you squirm in your seat.

If it lands on you at all, you know, it's like acid landing on you and you're like, no, I don't want any of that on me. But it's all on us. And it's not on us, it's in us. And so this is man's condition apart from Christ. And even for those who are in Christ, this is still where we came from. And when you become a Christian, all of this doesn't cease in an instant to fall away from you. It begins to die because God begins to work and you're given a new heart and your desires are changed over time. But this is where we start from. This is who we are. This is what brings them to make a golden calf at the mountain of Horeb. How else do you explain it? The stupidity of it. It's like, would you please just strike me dead is what they're saying by their actions. 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. When Moses did come down, he came to Aaron. Aaron, what have you done? Because Aaron's the one who made it. Aaron says in Exodus, this is chapter 32, verses 23 and 24. Aaron 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 fault. He says, for 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 has 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 calf. Honey, I just stepped away for a minute and it's broken. What happened? And they go, it just fell. And you're like, I don't think it just fell. I think you threw it and broke it.

I think once it broke, you stomped on it. There's no escaping 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 Christ. And it being the temptation that so often arises in our hearts to lead us away from Jesus. It's hard to imagine doing what they did. But the reason it's hard to imagine doing what they did is because we never see ourselves doing that in our day-to-day life. Because we don't think we're that stupid or bad or sinful. We lie to ourselves. When we get married, our spouse might tell us that we're lying to ourselves, but we tell them they're wrong. You can't receive the grace of God and the forgiveness of sins until you truly do see who you are and what you are and what you deserve. And that God mercifully and graciously didn't give it to you.

then you have cause for thanksgiving and for praise and for humility and for confession of sin because you're like, okay, I know who I am now. I looked in a mirror and I saw something I didn't want to see. But what I saw in the mirror that I was avoiding seeing, God has seen clearly from the beginning of my days and he's kept me and not destroyed me. Though I tried to destroy myself, he kept me. by his 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 my own. So then we cut to a different section of this text. Moses is describing to them what happened. He says, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, which were written by the finger of God. 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're referred to, 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 God didn't destroy these people who deserved destruction, we come to find that that tablet of the covenant has bearing. Okay? We're looking at, to this point, we've looked at all of their disobedience. And on those tablets were written their obligations, their terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. 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 people. 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 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, that would be a violation of his covenant obligations to them that he made back in Abraham. And so you have this stark contrast between their immediate unfaithfulness and God's 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? He 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? Why was he not judged for smashing the tablets? Seems to be a greater offense.

or at least on 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, 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 kind of 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. Because they had already smashed the tablets. They had already 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. All he was doing was giving, explaining to them what they had already done. You have broken these obligations to the Lord. You deserve destruction. And after that, Immediately after that, the passage says, I fell down before the Lord as at the first 40 days and 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 40 days in terms of like times and intensity. He spent 40 days up on the mountain, neither eating or drinking with the Lord God.

Calvin says that he left his mortal estate because we can't go 40 days and 40 nights without drinking naturally. That he assumed a different state. There's something miraculous going on is the point. And so then he comes and he says, when I came down and saw with my own eyes that what the Lord told me you had done, I saw that you had actually done. I took the tablets, I smashed them. And again, as at the first 40 days and 40 nights of fasting and prayer for all the sin that you've committed. So now 80 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 final part here. He says, but the Lord listened to me at that time also. After he 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 32, 11 through 14, it says, this is one of Moses' interactions, his prayers. He says, Moses entreated the Lord his God, and he said, O Lord, 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 attribute owners? He said, Moses, you led these people, your people. And so Moses is reminding, no, they're not my people, they're your people. You've promised these things.

O Lord, 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, saying, 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. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by yourself and said to them, I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens. And all this land 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.

We just say, hey, would you, you know, I'm sorry, would you forgive me? And then we just carry on about our day. But 40 days, like for a funeral, he grieves and he focuses and he laments and he prays that God might be merciful. He also prays for Aaron. 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 40 days. Because he took their sin 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 the Aaron story. Well, we don't know. And you're like, I heard. I have ears. I heard it. And then we come to the point where the kid says, well, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that.

Do you have confidence that they won't be back at this in 10 minutes or the next day? Oftentimes they're right back at it. Why? Because they didn't take none of us, including the parents, took their sin seriously enough. You may have yelled at them or manipulated them or threatened them for 10 minutes, but you didn't spank them. You should have, 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 discipline them for it. We just manipulate them for it.

And then we're surprised when they do it again. Their sin's 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 come. And we don't take that seriously. responsibility lightly. We don't exercise that authority flippantly. But there have been times over the years where you'll have somebody come and they'll confess sin in their life. 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. I've been committing adultery. I've been stealing. 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. What then should the elders do? What often will happen is we'll talk, we'll ask questions, we'll pray. But there have been occasions where we've told that person that they may not take the Lord's Supper for a period of time. 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 time. And it seems so out 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 and they never confessed their sins. For all those years, they never took it seriously. They never felt it. They never...

dealt with it. And now that they've dealt with it, we're supposed to go, it's over. And it's not always the case. What often will happen in 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 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 destruction that now 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 period of time, we think it would be good to resensitize you to the gravity of what's going on, okay? And that's an example of taking the sin seriously. That's not an excommunication. That's not, we don't believe you're a Christian. That is not, you are not welcome here. That is, we can't believe you did that. That is not, we're going to go tell everybody about it. It's none of those things. It's simply taking the sin seriously and realizing that if we just cover over it quickly and act like everything's fine, it's more likely to happen again. And so we take the sin seriously. We say, we want to see you resensitized to it. You've been eating unworthily for years, and we need some time to process through that. And so sin ought to be taken seriously. It ought to be...

dealt with. Moses spends 40 days not eating and not drinking, praying hard that God would be faithful to his word and not consume them. 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 depends on the circumstances. And the conviction of the Holy Spirit as he works through the situation with us. But the goal is we want to take the sin seriously as to prevent it from happening again, right? Compare that with the 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 week or in 10 minutes. The sin ought to be taken seriously. Moses takes their sins very seriously.

He takes God's holiness very seriously. So we ought to be like Moses and being sensitive to God's holiness and our sinfulness. The final thing Moses did was he took the idol, he burned it with fire. He ground it 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 into there, and then he's made them to drink it. I can only imagine how awful that would be, how distasteful. 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 Egypt. They've given to make an idol. It's been destroyed, and now they're being made to partake of it, to eat it, to taste its bitterness and its foulness. And the whole goal is that they might remember and not do it again. Now, is that gracious?

We don't think that's gracious. That's not a gracious thing to do. That seems like a really hard-nosed, mean thing to do. But what's the other option? The other option is the wrath of God being poured out on the people who have given themselves to rebellion. It's gracious 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 real pressure. for us to feel and to flee from our sins. And that's what's going on in this passage. 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 passage. And we would do well to be this gracious with each other as the need arises. Let's pray.