God’s Response To The Calf
Okay, I think I have made the following comment just about
every time I read this passage. But it
is such an obvious note to make that it has to be said. I am always amused when I hit Exodus 32:7 and
God says to Moses “Go down to your people
whom you brought out of Egypt.” There are few times in the Bible where God
seems more human than God, but this is always one of those times.
The reason this makes me laugh is because parents, pet
owners, teachers, etc all have an innate tendency to secure possession when
things are good and then to give away possession when things are poor. When our dogs do something silly – or just
plain gross – I look at Cara and say, “What are your dogs doing?” And for
the record, she does the same to me.
It’s become a bit of a joke.
But I’ve noticed that anyone in authority over someone or
something else has a tendency to do this.
It always lightens my heart to hear God do this in this passage. I’m not saying that God isn’t acting like God
here, but it is a clear passage where we get a very rare glimpse of God acting
a bit like humanity.
The People
So now let’s talk a little bit about the people. They sin.
There is no other way around it. Shame
on Aaron for going with their sin and not rebuking them! Ditto for me as a leader when I allow people
to go along in sin, too.
What is the root of their sin? Well, the root of their sin is actually
impatience. They are not willing to wait
around to see the fullness of God’s plan.
They make idols themselves. They
take God’s plan into their own hands and push it forward before God is
ready. They are impatient and easily
distracted and those two things lead us into sin every time. Impatience and unbelief lead to idolatry and
idolatry leads to sin.
I find that passage to be a double-edged sword, though. It is possible to take that prior paragraph
and use it as proof that we should sit around doing what we’ve always done
until God makes it very clear that we need to change into something
greater. That’s horrible advice as
well. After Jesus’ death the apostles
were out doing ministry and almost daily doing new things and having to come up
with new ideas about how the growing church should be on the move. The moving and shaking of the Holy Spirit is
not always that clear except in hindsight.
If we wait for hindsight to kick in, we’ve missed the boat!
I think the best approach is to be open to trying new things
while letting the Holy Spirit work. If
the new things take, then embrace them.
If God blesses new opportunity, run with it. If it falls flat on its face, don’t take it
personally and let it go. There is
nothing wrong with trying and failing – because in trying we give God the
opportunity to bless it. Anything worth
doing well is worth doing poorly at first!
On the contrary there is everything wrong with refusing to try.
There is likewise everything wrong with refusing to stop something that is
being tried and has obviously failed. What
is important is that we are willing to listen to God through the waiting and
the action.
Discerning the Spirits
I realize I have taken us down a bit of a rabbit trail and I
need to go back and tie up some loose ends.
Yet, there is something that needs to be said about trying new things:
whatever we try must be in alignment with God’s Word.
That is the part that Aaron overlooked when dealing with the
people. The Golden Calf is not in accordance
with God’s ways. I’m not saying that
Aaron was right in trying it to see if God was in it. Aaron should have seen it as idolatry and put
the stop to it immediately. But in
general, we should likewise not let this passage convince us to not try
anything new while we stoically sit on our hands and wait for God to speak
clearly from the mountain, either.
Aaron’s Guilt
I really had to laugh today when I read Aaron’s explanation
of how the Golden Calf came into existence.
Aaron seems to say, “They took of their gold, threw it in the fire, and
out popped this thing!”
What a human display!
How often do we try and minimize our part when things go awry! I think this is quite natural, but absolutely
the wrong action. We desire to get out
of consequences; in actuality it is owning up to our actions and living through
the consequences of our actions that produces the most fruitful path of growth.
Spirituality Versus Reality
I would also like to speak a little bit about the ending of
the passage. It is a very stereotypical
ending for me – and I mean that in a good educational way. Moses and Joshua are up on the mountaintop
having a deeply spiritual moment when along comes reality, other people’s
sinfulness, other people’s inability to stay focused on God, etc. Moses’ and Joshua’s spiritual time comes
crashing to a halt because of other people.
What’s worse is that after dealing with the sins of the
people, Moses goes back to God and God gives Moses a hard lesson. “It’s over, Moses. Pack up your stuff and leave the mountain. Our time of deep spirituality has come to an
end.”
I mourn for Moses and Joshua. Other people got in the way and ruined their
spirituality. It is actually my
experience that the more spiritual moment a person is experiencing the more the
people around them try to drag them back down.
I don’t know if it is bad luck, jealousy, inability to comprehend
spirituality, or what. But I do know
that often my most spiritual times come crashing to a stop because I have to
deal with the world. I would like to say
that my spiritual times rise up and then come down gradually; but for me, that
is not usually the case. I seem to never
know when they are coming and they always seem to end prematurely.
I also feel the need to make public confession that I am
genuinely sorry for the times when I have helped snuff out someone else’s
spiritual moment. Clearly that is not
the right thing to do and it is necessary for me to repent of those times when
I did ruin someone else’s time on the mountain with God.
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