Christians often get heartburn trying to figure out passages such as Deuteronomy 9.13–10.11. It records the golden calf incident in which the Israelites at the foot of Mt. Horeb (Sinai) decided to make a golden graven image just weeks after God had audibly spoken from that same mountain, “You shall worship no other gods before Me” and “You shall not make for yourselves any graven image.”
Moses had tarried too long on the mountain for their liking, so they had demanded of Aaron, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us.” This was not religious fervor. They wanted to play (Exodus 32.6), and their entertainment was not red-rover or pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Paul accused them of idolatrous practices in 1 Corinthians 10.7, and idolatry is not historically known for its innocent hopscotch games.
In anger, God told Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, 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 of you a nation mightier and greater than they” (Deut. 9.13–14).
God’s anger rightfully burned against Israel at this time; even the mountain burned around Moses as he descended. Upon beholding their sin, Moses hurled down the two tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments, and they broke—a fitting image for Israel’s breaking of the covenant.
After burning, crushing, and grinding the golden calf, Moses sprinkled its dust into a brook that ran down the mountain. Similarly, we should devote our own sins to destruction.
Then Moses fasted forty days and forty nights, lying prostrate before the Lord and praying for the people. This is a great testimony to Moses’ humility, his elevated regard for God, and his love for God’s people.
Though Israel did not deserve it, God listened to Moses and forgave them! Moses told the people, “The Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was unwilling to destroy you,” (Deut. 10.10).
And here comes the heartburn.
If God is all-knowing (omniscient), and if He knows the future, which He clearly does (Isaiah 46.10–11; Psalm 139.4, 16), then how can He say to Moses, “I’m going to wipe out these sinning Israelites and start over with you,” and then not wipe them out like He said He would?
God forbid we think that Moses was able to reason with God to convince Him that He wasn’t thinking clearly at the moment. “Lord, if You would just calm down, You will see several reasons why this is not a good idea.” And then God’s anger cooled, and He decided, “Moses is right; I’ve not been thinking clearly. I’m so glad Moses was there to stop Me from doing something I would regret.” Again I say, God forbid!
No, God knew the whole time what He would do, what Moses would do, what the people would do. Moses did not give Him additional information or get Him to “calm down” or anything like that. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts,” declares the Lord in Isaiah 55.9.
Should we then think less of His anger because God will just forget about it? No! One of the great lessons from this passage is that God’s anger is righteous and burns hot—He would have been completely righteous in wiping this whole people out, as He had done in Noah’s day, and starting over with Moses. Rather than fear less, we should fear God more. Would you or I have spent forty days and forty nights on our faces entreating the Lord’s forgiveness for our own sin? That’s a high view of sin and a high sense of fear.
God gave the world, through this event, a lesson in grace. He showed us that grace must come through a mediator, an intercessor. This is not a lesson on how God doesn’t completely know the future and how His mind can be changed. Rather, it’s a lesson on how God deals with the sins of His covenant people! He dealt with their sin through Moses. And we must remember how Moses became their leader—God appointed him. So God placed Moses in the role of mediator, and then God listened to His chosen mediator. God supplied the means by which He would give the people grace. Their salvation is all of God, in other words.
We now know, “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Tim. 2.5–6). Moses was a type of Christ, imperfectly foreshadowing the perfect role Christ now plays as the one and only mediator between us and God.
“Therefore He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant… For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer Himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then He would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”
Hebrews 9.16, 24–26
Put away the heartburn, dear Christian. Though God is said to have “repented” in some cases in Scripture, it is merely a way of teaching us about His grace. It shows us what we deserve; it shows us our need for a mediator; it shows us the gravity of our sinful behavior; it shows us God’s desire for our prayers. This is similar to anthropomorphic language of Scripture which speaks of God’s hand and ear (Isaiah 59.1) and His arm (Isaiah 59.16; 53.1), even though we know God is spirit (John 4.24) and has none of those appendages.
God asked Adam in Genesis 3.9, “Where are you?” and in Genesis 3.11, “Have you eaten of the tree?” Did He not know?
In Genesis 11.5 it is said that “the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had built,” as if He had to discover what they were up to.
God stayed Abraham’s hand and said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy…for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me” (Genesis 22.12). Did God not already know Abraham feared Him? Does God have to put us all to the test to discover this about us?
When Pharoah enslaved Israel in Egypt, “Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (Exodus 2.23–24). If God “remembered,” does that mean God forgot?
In all those cases above, the Holy Spirit saw fit to describe God’s actions in ways we can identify with. They do not take away from His perfect knowledge, power, or presence, but describe the actions of a transcendent, infinite God interacting with His finite creation. We cannot and will not understand all these things now because we are not God. But we can interpret God’s word in a faithful way that does not slip into heretical, illogical, or blasphemous positions.
Praise God for His grace in dealing with us where we are!
Praise God for supplying in Jesus Christ everything needed for His grace to be realized.