So, what’s the big deal about sin? That may be our attitude if we only think about sin in abstract, judicial terms, putting it in the same category with the speed limit, for example. As long as we aren’t hurting anyone else, why should God make such a big fuss about it?

Well, today’s passage shows us that Someone always gets hurt when we sin – God does. God had told the Ancient Israelites back in chapter 20 that they weren’t supposed to worship anyone or anything besides Him, and that they certainly weren’t supposed to bow down to any sort of images. And then they went and made a golden calf and offered sacrifices to it (v. 8). Worse yet, they gave this man-made inanimate object the credit for bringing them out of Egypt.

So, how would you feel if someone you loved started loving someone else? How would you feel if someone for whom you had done a lot of nice things started to give thanks to someone else for those things? You’d probably feel distant from that person. And you’d probably get angry with him or her.

Well, today’s passage shows us that God reacted to the Ancient Israelites in a similar way. In verse 7, he turns His back on them, describing them not as His own people whom He had brought out of Egypt, but just as Moses’ people. And in verse 10, He says He was very angry with them, even angry enough to consume them, to destroy them all – and we can certainly understand that.

But God turned away from His anger. And why? Because Moses prayed for them, begging God not to destroy them. And why did God listen to Moses? Because Moses did what the people wouldn’t do – he put God first. Notice that even though in verse 10 God said He could start all over again, treating Moses the way He had treated Abraham and making Moses’ descendants into a great nation, Moses would have none of it. Instead, his only concern was God’s glory, God’s reputation. Moses didn’t want the Egyptians to gloat, to say that the only reason God had led His people out of Egypt was to destroy them. Moses wanted everyone to understand that God loves His people, even when they show Him only disobedience and disrespect.

In this selfless, God-focused way, Moses was also giving us a little foretaste of what Jesus would do. But Jesus didn’t just pray and ask God to forgive us – He laid down His own life so that we might be forgiven, and He rose from the grave so that God would receive all the glory for our salvation. Isn’t He worthy of all our love and devotion and obedience?

Exodus 32:7-14 (ESV)

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?
12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.
13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.'”
14 And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.