Hello and welcome to Bible Stories. I am your host, Matt Mullins.

Todd Heyman's, your other host, would be here today, but we have had two hours worth of technical difficulties.

And I just knew, we just knew, we needed to get this story to you.

And so you're just with your old friend Matt today.

But I'm excited that you're here

because we're looking at a very interesting story in Exodus chapter 33. And in this story,

the people of Israel had just made a massive blunder. We're talking about they're making the

golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. They fell into idol worship and Moses's brother, Aaron, crafted this idol, this false god for Israel and pointed to it and said, see Israel, hear the gods that delivered you from Egypt.

And we're still not completely sure what he meant by that.

Did he mean that this golden calf was the God that delivered the people?

Did he mean that in conjunction with Yahweh, this piece of metal, this piece of gold did it?

Or perhaps was this piece of metal some kind of extension of Yahweh himself.

We don't really know, but we do know that the people made a mess of things.

This clearly was not the right thing to do.

The Lord was ready to bring justice to this affront.

And so he told Moses in Exodus chapter 32, starting in verse number nine.

Then the Lord said, I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are.

Now leave me alone so my fierce anger can blaze against them and I will destroy them.

Then I will make you Moses into a great nation.

So this is God saying that he's going to just forget about the people. He's going to

do away with them because of their rebellion. God would bring justice to them and he's going to turn

Moses into this great nation. But Moses, long-suffering Moses, patient Moses, he asks the Lord to please show mercy and God does. And when God does that, Moses, long-suffering Moses, patient Moses, he asks the Lord to please show mercy, and God does.

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