Golden Calf
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I don't want to write this, but I have to.
Late Saturday afternoon I was paralyzed with a thought...a realization...an all consuming alarm going off in my head, and a knot in the pit of my stomach that just wouldn't let go. This same thought had floated through my mind on and off over the course of the last 6 months, but today it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I can't ignore it any more.
I've been reading Genesis and Exodus a lot lately. This has been partly because I've accepted the challenge to read Genesis 50 times in order to deepen my understanding and recognitions of the Bible's vast amount of textual hyperlinks to that book, and partly because I've been teaching and preaching from these texts for over a month now. I want to share with you a realization I had from my recent reading.
After God performs many signs and wonders against Egypt, after Israel crosses through the sea, and after God provides for them in the wilderness, they arrive at Mount Sinai. A beautiful and powerful covenant ceremony takes place...a wedding if you will between God and the people of Israel. This is where we receive the 10 Commandments in the Exodus narrative. They begin like this:
1 And God spoke all these words:
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
After we read the 10 Commandments, we hear the voice of the nation of Israel to Moses:
19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
Did you follow that? The first thing God wants them to do is recognize that He is the one who brought them out of Egypt. They should not worship any other deity, nor try to capture or constrain Him to some sort of created image. That's what everyone else in their part of the world would do, but this is not what they are called to do.
And their response is that they don't want to hear directly from their Savior. The creator of heaven and earth is willing to speak directly to them, and they don't want to hear it.
After God finishes talking to Moses, the very next thing to happen after this wedding scene is idolatry. Aaron (co-leader of Israel along with Moses and Miriam, the priest who just finished dining in the very presence of God [24:9-11]) makes golden calf idols for the people to worship. But notice what the text tells us:
1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”
3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.
4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.”
6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.
8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people.
10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?
12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.
13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’ ”
14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
Moses pleads with God to remember his promises. Remember the promise you made to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob! Do as you have promised! And God does! God keeps his promise, even when the people don’t.
Do you hear the Garden of Eden narrative ringing in your ears within this story? The very first directive God gives Adam and Eve is to not eat this fruit. What's the first thing they do? They eat the fruit.
The first directive God gives Israel is that He is the one who brought them out of Egypt, so don't worship any other gods or make an image of me. What's the first thing they do? In their own context, they eat the fruit.
God wants his people to be a "kingdom of priests" (Ex. 19:6) who are different from the world around them in order to lead the world to God. But Israel chose to be just like the world.
But Moses knew better. Moses stood up for the people. If you didn’t know this, you need to. Moses offered his life on behalf of the people’s sin!
32 But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”
Now fast forward to today. COVID plagued election season in America.
God has called his church to be a "priesthood" (1 Pt. 2:9) that leads the world to Christ. But just like Israel, the church has chosen to be just like the world.
In large part, the church has bowed to golden calves (or donkeys, or elephants) instead of humbly leading the world in worship of our Savior.
Instead of pointing to the cross and the empty tomb, we've been pointing to ourselves saying "look what we have made!" When it comes to reaching the lost we focus on programs, and music, and skilled speaking, and comfortable buildings, and coffee bars, and awesome children's wings, and flashy websites. The list goes on and on and on.
And don't hear me saying that those things are bad. Good things can come from all of that. But when we start thinking that the power to reach the lost comes from that list of things instead of the Holy Spirit's work on the hearts of the lost bathed in the prayers of the saints, we have bowed our knee to the golden calves.
When did we stop trusting God? When did we stop believing in God's active role in our world? When did we trade being the hands and feet of Christ for the cheap substitute of trying to be one of the cool kids?
The last word that Jesus has for the church in Matthew's Gospel is to "Go and make disciples." And we sit comfortably inside of a nice church building and politely whisper "Ya'll come!"
And now that God has allowed our world to be upended, and our worship routines to be disrupted, our instinct is to immediately return to the "Ya'll come" comfort we had in February. But instead of focusing on how we can get people back at the church building post-COVID, why aren't we focusing on how we can get out of our buildings and reach the lost in our communities? Perhaps one of the byproducts of us all dealing with this routine altering plague is that God wants us to change our routine!
Sisters and Brothers, it's time that we stop being just like the world around us. Trusting in the trappings of this world in order to save the lost is worshiping the golden calf. We must be the people of God who get outside of the building and shine His light in the darkness of the world around us!
We can do better! We must do better! We must be holy as our God is holy.
Stop bowing to the golden calves.