The Terrible Mercy of a Withdrawn God Text: Exodus 33:1-6
Introduction: The Aftermath of a Golden Folly
We come now to the hangover after the party. Israel has just engaged in a drunken, idolatrous, orgiastic festival at the foot of the very mountain where God had thundered His law against such things. While Moses was on the mountain receiving the law, the people down below were busy breaking every commandment they could, starting with the first two. They fashioned a golden calf, a bovine deity borrowed from their Egyptian oppressors, and had the audacity to declare, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!"
This was not a simple mistake. This was high treason. This was spiritual adultery of the rankest sort. They took the glory of the incorruptible God and exchanged it for an image of a castrated bull. And God's response was swift and terrible. Three thousand men fell under the sword of the Levites, a bloody purge of the ringleaders. But the judgment was not over. The plague had been stayed, but the covenant had been shattered. The relationship between Yahweh and His people was now in crisis. What we have in our text today is the formal, legal fallout of that great sin. It is God's official response to their national apostasy.
And what we find is one of the most terrifying threats in all of Scripture. It is not a threat of fire or brimstone, but something far worse: the threat of God's absence. God essentially tells them, "The deal is still on. You can have the land. You can have the milk and honey. You can have the victory over your enemies. You can have all the blessings of the covenant. But you will not have Me."
We live in a generation that treats the presence of God as a casual thing, a nice add-on, like heated seats in a car. We think we can have the benefits of Christianity, the morality, the civilization, the sense of community, without the terrifying, holy, consuming fire of God Himself in our midst. But this passage shows us that this is the most dreadful judgment of all. To be given the blessings without the Blesser is not a blessing; it is the ultimate curse. It is to be given the shell without the kernel, the gift wrap without the gift. It is to be sent to the Promised Land with a letter of eviction from the King's presence already in your pocket.
The Text
Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Go! Go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘To your seed I will give it.’ And I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst because you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way.”
Then the people heard this sad word and went into mourning; and none of them put on his ornaments. So Yahweh said to Moses, “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; should I go up in your midst for one moment, I would consume you. So now, put off your ornaments from you, that I may know what I shall do with you.’ ” So the sons of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.
(Exodus 33:1-6 LSB)
The Promise and the Threat (vv. 1-3)
We begin with God's devastating command to Moses.
"Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Go! Go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘To your seed I will give it.’ And I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst because you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way.”" (Exodus 33:1-3 LSB)
Notice the cold, formal distance in God's language. He says to Moses, "you and the people whom you have brought up." He doesn't say "My people." He is distancing Himself from them. This is the language of divorce. The covenant bond has been violated, and God is speaking like the aggrieved party. He will keep His promise to the patriarchs, His oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is not a liar. The real estate transaction will go through. He will give them the land. He will even send an angel, a created being, as an escort and a divine enforcer to clear out the inhabitants. They will get the prosperity, the milk and honey. They will get the military victory. They will get everything they thought they wanted.
But then comes the hammer blow: "for I will not go up in your midst." Why? Because He is holy and they are not. "You are a stiff-necked people." This is a metaphor from animal husbandry. A stiff-necked ox is one that refuses the yoke. It will not be guided; it will not submit. Israel has just demonstrated this in spades. They refused the yoke of God's law and fashioned a god they could lead around by the nose, a god who would do their bidding.
And here we see the terrible mercy in this judgment. God withdraws His immediate, glorious presence for their own protection. "Lest I consume you on the way." Our God is a consuming fire. Holiness is not safe for sinners to be around. For God to remain in their midst in His manifest glory would be like setting up a nuclear reactor in the middle of a preschool. Their constant, stiff-necked provocations would inevitably trigger a final, annihilating response. So God says, "I will remove Myself, so that you are not destroyed." This is a judgment, but it is a judgment designed to prevent a greater, final judgment. It is a terrible mercy.
This is a standing warning to the church in every age. It is entirely possible to have a church that has all the outward trappings of success, the big building, the impressive programs, the slick music, the land flowing with milk and honey, but from which the manifest presence of God has departed. And the most terrifying part is that we might not even notice His absence, because we have an angel, a well-oiled administrative system, to keep things running smoothly. We can have the form of godliness while denying its power, and the greatest judgment is that God might just let us have it that way.
A Sad Word and a Stripped People (vv. 4-6)
The people's reaction to this news is crucial. It is the first glimmer of hope.
"Then the people heard this sad word and went into mourning; and none of them put on his ornaments." (Exodus 33:4 LSB)
They heard this "sad word." The Hebrew is literally a "bad" or "evil" word. For the first time, they understood what was at stake. They realized that the land of milk and honey without Yahweh was not the Promised Land at all; it was just a fertile patch of dirt. The presence of God was the whole point. To lose His presence was to lose everything. And so they mourned. This was not the phony, coerced grief of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. This was genuine corporate repentance beginning to take root. They understood the gravity of their sin.
And their mourning was not just an internal feeling. It took on an immediate, external, and visible form: "none of them put on his ornaments." What were these ornaments? They were their jewelry, their finery, the very gold that they had melted down to make the calf. These ornaments were symbols of their wealth, their status, and their worldly glory. They were the trinkets they brought out of Egypt. To take them off was an act of corporate humiliation. It was a visible statement: "We are done with our own glory. We are done with the gods of Egypt. We are laying aside everything that competes with You."
God then formalizes this act of repentance in the next verse.
"So Yahweh said to Moses, “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; should I go up in your midst for one moment, I would consume you. So now, put off your ornaments from you, that I may know what I shall do with you.’ ” So the sons of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward." (Exodus 33:5-6 LSB)
God repeats the diagnosis, "You are a stiff-necked people," and the danger, "should I go up in your midst for one moment, I would consume you." He is making sure they understand the stakes. Then He gives the command that they had already begun to obey: "put off your ornaments from you." This is a test. Repentance must be tangible. It is not enough to feel bad; you must act bad about it. You must strip yourself of the very things that enabled your sin. Their gold had become an idol, so the gold had to go. This is the principle of mortification. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If your smart phone is your golden calf, you don't just feel sorry about it; you do something about it. You strip it off.
And what is the purpose? "That I may know what I shall do with you." This is not God seeking information, as though He were uncertain. This is covenantal language. God is putting them on probation. He is saying, "Your actions will demonstrate the reality of your repentance, and I will respond to that demonstration." He is making space for their repentance to be proven genuine. Will they obey this command to humble themselves? Their future as a people in covenant with God hangs on this very tangible act of obedience.
And they obey. "So the sons of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward." This was not a temporary gesture. From that point on, they adopted a posture of humility and plainness. They took off the symbols of their rebellion. This act of stripping was the necessary prerequisite for the mediation of Moses that follows, and for the eventual renewal of the covenant. Before God would restore His presence, the people had to remove their pride.
Conclusion: The Ornaments of Grace
This is a hard passage, but it is full of the gospel. The central crisis here is the incompatibility of a holy God and a sinful people. How can God dwell with us and not consume us? The temporary solution here was for God to withdraw and for the people to strip themselves bare in repentance. But this was just a shadow, a stop-gap measure.
The ultimate answer to this problem is the incarnation. In Jesus Christ, the glorious, holy, consuming presence of God took on human flesh. God Himself came to dwell in our midst, not in a way that would consume us, but in a way that would save us. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
On the cross, Jesus became the ultimate stiff-necked rebel in our place. He took our sin upon Himself. And there, He was consumed by the wrath of God that we deserved. God did not spare His own Son, so that He might spare us. Because of Christ's mediation, God does not say to us, "I will not go in your midst." Instead, He says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you," and He gives us His Holy Spirit to dwell not just in our midst, but within our very hearts.
But the principle of stripping off our ornaments remains. We are called to a life of repentance. We are called to "put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires" (Ephesians 4:22). We are to strip ourselves of all pride, all self-reliance, all golden calves of our own making. Our repentance must be just as tangible as Israel's. We must identify the idols we have manufactured from God's blessings and we must remove them.
And what do we put on in their place? We are not left naked. We are to "put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). We are to clothe ourselves with Christ (Romans 13:14). He is our glory. He is our adornment. The church is the bride of Christ, and she is adorned not with the fading gold of this world, but with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, and with the good works which God prepared beforehand for her to do. We strip off the ornaments of pride so that we might be clothed in the ornaments of grace, all purchased for us by the blood of our Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ.