I. THE ENORMITY OF THIS SIN.

1. It was a sin committed immediately after solemn covenant with God (ver. 9). The transactions recorded in Exodus 24:3-9 were not yet forty days old. The people had literally heard God speaking to them. They had acknowledged the solemnity of the situation by entreating Moses to act as mediator. They had formally, and under awful impressions of God's majesty, pledged themselves to life-long obedience. Yet within that brief space of time they broke through all restraints, and violated the main stipulation of their agreement, by setting up and worshipping the golden calf. A transgression showing greater levity, temerity, deadness to spiritual feeling, and perversity of disposition, it would be difficult to conceive. Perhaps the case is not a solitary one. Can none remember instances of solemn vows, of sacred engagements, of deep impressions, almost as soon forgotten, almost as recklessly followed up by acts of flagrant transgression?

2. It was a sin committed while Moses was in the mount, transacting for them (vers. 9-12). Moses, for an obvious reason, rehearses the circumstances of his stay in the mount, and of his interview with God. He had gone to receive the tables of the Law. He recalls, as in striking contrast with the levity of the multitudes below, his rapt communion of forty days and nights. Sin needs a background to bring it out in its full enormity. That background is furnished in these details. The people are pointed to the tables as the rule of the obedience they had pledged themselves to render. They are reminded that their sin was perpetrated at a time when God was yet transacting with them, and when their minds ought to have been filled with very different thoughts. Do we reflect on the aggravation given to our own sins by the presence of our Mediator in the heavenly mount, and by the ceaseless and holy work he is there conducting on our behalf?

3. It was a sin of daring enormity in itself. The making of the golden calf, after what had happened, can only be characterized as an act of shocking impiety. The worship was doubtless accompanied by profane and lewd revelings. This under the eye of their God and King.

II. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE SIN.

1. It involved the forfeiture of covenant privilege, signified by the breaking of the tables of the Law (ver. 17). This was the first light in which the Israelites had to view it. It refuted their idea that they got the land in virtue of their righteousness. True, the sin had been committed by the preceding generation, but the covenant being national, and laying obligations on all, involved them as well as their parents in the consequences of disobedience. If they stood still in covenant relation, it was of God's mercy which had restored them. For a time that covenant was actually broken. Nor, if that argument was necessary, had they failed in their own persons to renew the deed of apostasy (ver. 22). Every believer feels that his standing before God is likewise of pure grace. Were sins imputed to him to his condemnation, he could not stand a single hour.

2. It provoked God to hot displeasure (vers. 19, 20). As all daring and presumptuous sin does.

3. But for Moses intercession, it would have involved them in destruction (vers. 14, 19, 20). This was no mere drama acted between God and Moses, but a most real wrath, averted by the real and earnest intercession of a godly man. Had Moses not interceded, the people would have been destroyed. Not that we are to conceive God as swayed by human passions, or as requiring to be soothed down by human entreaty. But sin does awaken his displeasure. There burns in his nature a holy wrath against it, which, when he decrees to consume his adversaries, is not to be laid aside save on such ground as we have here. It is the existence of wrath in God which gives reality to propitiation and meaning to his mercy. Learn:

(1) How evil sin is in the sight of God.

(2) How fearful in its results to the transgressor.

(3) How mighty intercession is in procuring pardon. - J.O.

II. HE ASSURES THEM OF VICTORY, BY THE PRESENCE OF GOD WITH THEM, NOTWITHSTANDING THE STRENGTH OF THE ENEMY (ver. 3). Observe, "He shall destroy them," and then, "thou shalt drive them out." Thou canst not drive them out unless He destroy them, and bring them down; but He will not destroy them, and bring them down, unless thou set thyself in good earnest to drive them out. We must do our endeavour in dependence upon God's grace; and we shall have that grace, if we do our endeavour.

III. HE CAUTIONS THEM NOT TO ENTERTAIN THE LEAST THOUGHT OF THEIR OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS, AS IF THAT HAD PROCURED THEM THIS FAVOUR AT GOD'S HAND (vers. 4-6). In Christ we have both righteousness and strength; in Him, therefore, we must glory, and not in ourselves, or any sufficiency of our own.

IV. HE INTIMATES TO THEM THE TRUE REASONS WHY GOD WOULD TAKE THIS GOOD LAND OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE CANAANITES AND SETTLE IT UPON ISRAEL.

1. He will be honoured in the destruction of idolaters (vers. 4, 5).

2. He will be honoured in the performance of His promise to those that are in covenant with Him (ver. 5).

( Matthew Henry, D. D..)