Exodus Points to Jesus

Jesus is the Moses of our salvation, the mediator who goes for us before God. Jesus is the Lamb of our Passover, the sacrifice for our sins. Jesus is our way out of Egypt, the deliverer who baptizes us in the sea of his grace. Jesus is our bread in the wilderness, the provider who gives us what we need for daily life. Jesus is our voice from the mountain, declaring his law for our lives. Jesus is the altar of our burning, through whom we offer praise up to God. Jesus is the light on our lampstand, the source of our life and light. Jesus is the basin of our cleansing, the sanctifier of our souls. Jesus is our great High Priest, who prays for us at the altar of incense. And Jesus is the blood on the mercy seat, the atonement that reconciles us to God. The great God of the exodus has saved us in Jesus Christ. As we come to the end of Exodus, we see as well that Jesus is the glory in the tabernacle.

--Philip Graham Ryken, Exodus: Saved for God's Glory (Preaching the Word; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 1161-1162.

God's Consistent Compassion

The author of Jonah seems to want us to make this connection to Exodus 32, and so to see that God's compassion to Israel then is no different from his compassion to Nineveh now, for he has cast his description of God's reaction in Jonah 3:10 in the same words as God's decision to spare Israel in Exodus 32:14. One notable difference exists, however, between those two situations: Israel in Exodus 32 had not yet even repented (though Nineveh had)--Israel was spared only because of God's gracious response to Moses' intercession!

--Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah (New Studies in Biblical Theology; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 123.

Worshiping the True God Falsely

We also worship the true God falsely. We may not be tempted to make a golden calf, but we are tempted to turn the God who is there into the kind of God we would like him to be. We want God to teach our minds but not to transform our hearts. We want him to give us a lift when we worship him on Sunday, but we don't want him to govern all our words and actions the rest of the week. We want him to change others, but we don't want him to change us. We want his love without his holiness and his mercy without his justice.

--Philip Graham Ryken, Exodus: Saved for God's Glory (Preaching the Word; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 985.

No Conflict between Duty and Delight

All too often, we set up in our minds a contrast between duty and delight when it comes to serving the Lord. For instance, we contrast form and freedom when it comes to liturgy and worship as if form quenches all freedom or as if freedom cannot have form. But according to this text [Exodus 35:4-29], there is no contradiction between what we must do and what we want to do as God's people. The movement of the Israelites' redeemed hearts to give the Lord an offering was in complete unison with the Lord's will for their lives.

--Daniel R. Hyde, God in Our Midst: The Tabernacle & Our Relationship with God (Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust, 2012), Kindle location 823.

God's Forgiveness Cannot Be Presumed

To be sure, God is gracious and merciful, but his forgiveness cannot be presumed, as if God is duty bound to remove our sins anytime and anywhere we ask him.

--Victor P. Hamilton, Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 554-555.

Forbidden Worship

It is precisely the attempt to worship Yahweh by means he has already declared totally unacceptable that makes the sin of the golden calf so destructive, far more so than a simple shift of allegiance to "other" or "foreign" gods. The people receive the calf with the confession "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt," an act they had attributed to Moses, albeit certainly as Yahweh's representative, in [Exodus 32:1]. And Aaron, in obvious and and specific response, declares a sacred day to Yahweh, not to the calf, or to any other god or gods. The composite of Exod 32:1-6 is not an account of the abandonment of Yahweh for other gods; it is an account of the transfer of the center of authority of faith in Yahweh from Moses and the laws and symbols he has announced to a golden calf without laws and without any symbols beyond itself. Moses is the representative of a God invisible in mystery. The calf is to be the representative of that same God, whose invisibility and mystery is compromised by an image he has forbidden.

--John I. Durham, Exodus (Word Biblical Commentary 3; Dallas: Word, 1987), 421-422.

The Attraction of Idolatry

But why did the people want "gods who can go before us"? Were they not satisfied with Yahweh's leadership during the past months, as he went before them day and night? The answer was partly a matter of the strong attractions of idolatry, partly a matter of the absence of Moses, who was so closely associated with Yahweh's presence, partly a matter of the passage of time during which the obvious presence of Yahweh in the pillar of cloud and fire was lacking, partly a matter of the attractiveness of the idea of a syncretism of Yahwism with the Egyptian bull cult..., but mostly a matter of something that continues to plague even Christian people today: an inability to see that the spiritual world is primary to and in control of the physical and visible world. In order to help his people understand this truth, Yahweh insisted on being believed in rather than being seen. It was so much easier to believe in something that could actually be seen. The Israelites were powerfully attracted to the latter option.

--Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus (New American Commentary 2; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006), 662-663.

Sinful People Totally Dependent on God's Forgiving Grace

The golden calf story is not simply one of the many biblical accounts of human sin. It is placed right after the conclusion of God's covenant with Israel and functions to replace the God-given instructions to Moses for proper worship before these had even been completed. All this gives the calf incident a definitive quality. It is in the story of Israel as a covenant people what the Fall (Gen. 3) is in the story of humankind: an act that defines Israel's character as rebellious, just as the Fall defined humanity's persistent tendency as rebellious.

In consequence, the relationship of Israel to God is immediately redefined as that of a sinful people totally dependent on God's forgiving grace, just as humanity's relationship to God was, from the beginning, a relationship based on God's forgiving grace. There never was a period in Israel's history marked by faithful covenant keeping, just as there never was a golden age of harmony between humans and God between Creation and Fall.

--Waldemar Janzen, Exodus (Believers Church Bible Commentary; Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2000), 410.

There Never was a Golden Age without a Golden Calf

The very purpose of telling the story of the golden calf immediately after the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai is to show that there never was a golden age without a golden calf, when the hearts of humans were pure. There never has been any such animal as Rousseau's noble savage.

--Godfrey Ashby, Go Out and Meet God: A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (International Theological Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 130.

The Greatness of Moses

Yet the greatness of Moses is also seen in his humiliation: he rejects the offer to become covenant father ([Exodus] 32:10) and "empties himself" to share the covenant curse (32:32). However, it is especially with respect to the intercession motif that one could say that Moses is so crucial that Israel's destiny hangs on his girdle. This does not suggest some "merits of Moses" idea but does try to take account of him as covenant mediator and as evidently the only Israelite still in covenant fellowship with God and unstained by the smear of apostasy.

--Dale Ralph Davis, "Rebellion, Presence, and Covenant: A Study in Exodus 32-34," Westminster Theological Journal 44:1 (Spring 1982), 73.

Running from God by Going to God

On the contrary, this man [Moses] dares to remind God of His own promise, to appeal to His faithfulness, beseeching Him, but also very definitely remonstrating with Him: "Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou has brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against they people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom thou swearest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven..." ([Exodus] 32:11f.). Is not this to flee from God to God, to appeal from God to God? And is it not the case that in this flight, this appeal of Moses, God finds Himself supremely and most profoundly understood and affirmed, that in a sense Moses has prayed, or rather demanded, from the very heart of God Himself? He hears and answers this prayer which is so defiant and dogmatic.

--Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume 4: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part I (transl. by G.W. Bromiley; edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 425-426.