Hi, this is John a Bible Project. Last week we began a new series looking at two important

verses in the Hebrew Bible. It's in the Book of Exodus, chapter 34, verses 6 and 7,

and it goes Yahweh, Yahweh, a God, compassionate and gracious. Slow to anger, abounding and loyal

love and faithfulness, maintaining love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, rebellion and sin, yet

he does not leave the guilty unpunished, bringer of iniquity to the children and their children

to the third and fourth generation. Last week we looked at this tension in this verse, how God is

both slow to anger but also full of justice. This week we're going to unpack the narrative in which

these verses are found. God has just rescued his people Israel from slavery and now they're out in

the wilderness and God is establishing a covenant relationship with them at a mountain called Sinai.

In Moses goes up and down the mountain to meet with God seven different times mediating this

covenant relationship. The covenant terms are summarized in the famous Ten Commandments, the first

of which is to worship Yahweh alone and the second not to create any idle images.

And so Exodus 24 ends with Moses going up the mountain to kind of seal the deal to tell God

like yep the people are going to do it, we're going to do this, we're going to be your covenant

people. So he goes up and the whole thing is the people just said we'll accept these vows, we're

going to get married, it's going to be awesome. This is the very next thing that is going to happen

in the narrative and Exodus 32 verse 1 is what the story picks up and it's where everything

starts to go terribly, terribly wrong. Down at the base of the mountain Israel decides that they're

going to make an idle statue. They pull together all the gold that they have and they create a statue

in the image of calf and say this is Yahweh they're breaking the very first covenant vow

while Moses is still establishing the relationship. The point of the golden calf narrative is to say

God's purposes have always been to work out his plan in the world through a covenant people.

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