Lesson 4: God's Holiness Causes a Removal of People, part 1

Exodus 32:19-28 - "And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it. And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.” And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for Aaron had let them break loose, to the derision of their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the LORD’s side? Come to me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. And he said to them, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.’” And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell."


Moses received the Ten Holy Commandments from God, but when he returned he saw the people engaged in some unholy behavior. Instead of giving the Israelites a huge lecture or even a dreaded time out, Moses gave orders to have them killed on the spot. They were permanently removed from God's presence. If we are honest, most of us will look at that passage and say, "God was a little extreme!" The only reason we dare question the holy word of God is because we try to understand the holiness of God from man's perspective. C.S. Lewis talks about this problem in the following story:

“There was a wise mystical barnacle that was at the bottom of the ocean. One day, after he got a glimpse of what man was like, this barnacle gathered his disciples around himself. He began to share his concept of man. He said first of all that from his point of view, man does not have a shell, that man is not attached to a rock, and that he is not surrounded by water like we barnacles. This led the barnacles to speculate on the nature of man. Soon they were teaching other barnacles that since man has no shell, he must be a shapeless blob. Since he is not attached to a rock, he obviously has no location. Since there is no water surrounding him to float food to him, man must not even need to eat. Thus from their own environment and their own nature, the barnacles came up with an extremely limited and warped concept of man. The author concludes that we too begin with ourselves in order to discover what God is like. We too will end up with an extremely limited and warped concept of God, which will be far less than what He truly is.”

We continue this in our next lesson.

* We are told in 1 Peter 1:16 that we are to be holy as God is holy – what does that mean to you?