"1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.
3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.
4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the Lord.
6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play."Exodus 32:1-6
The story of the golden calf is one that many of us Christians have heard over and over again. In short, when the Israelites were in the wilderness on their journey to the promise land they made a stop along the way where God revealed to them His precious laws. The people had all agreed to follow God and worship Him only. After this, Moses was called by God upon the mountain to spend 40 days and night with Him that God may reveal to Him more: His ten commandments. Meanwhile, the Israelites were waiting for Moses to come back and stayed with their other leader, Moses' brother Aaron.
In the verses above we read that the Israelites were getting tired of waiting and asked to be made gods to worship that they can follow and Aaron yielded to their demands by making a golden calf to worship and idolize.
I believe there are two lessons for us to be learned here. One relating to the Israelites and one relating to Aaron. In this blog post I will begin with the Israelites and in Part 2 I will discuss the Aaron part.
The Israelites were God's chosen people just as we, Christians, are God's chosen people today. And just as the Israelites had Moses leading them all the way back then, so do we today have leaders within the church. What happened with the Israelites when the main leader was gone? They started losing faith. Instead of remembering all the beautiful promises God had just shared with them, because Moses was gone, they were ready to move on to another God. How many times has that happened to some Christians? Where the pastor or leader of the church is gone or just not there to lead us, many feel that they cannot lead out their own individual faith. God wants us to have a personal relationship with Him. Although He wants us to respect the authorities around us, He doesn't want us to depend on them. He wants us to depend on Him! We can learn here from the Israelites (most of them) that they hadn't really established that personal relationship with God but rather had just been following Moses. Not only that but they needed something visual to ground their faith because their hearts were not grounded in the truth. How many of experience this today? Many Christians claiming to be Christians often rely upon exterior material such as crosses, pictures, images, statues, angels etc. but have no deep connection to God within. And I believe this is why God tells us not to make any graven image or likeness of anything that is from heaven (Exodus 20:4). It's because he didn't want our religion to be a superficial one but a personal and deep one.
Although the Exodus happened thousands of years ago, it is fascinating how much we learn from our history. History repeats itself and it's important when reading the Bible not to read it as a story but to really compare the events to our own personal lives. The Bible is filled with precious lessons because they stem from actual events of real people messing up or doing good.
I hope that if you related to the Israelites in any way that you will choose not to follow in their errors and build your own relationship with God. It is definitely a precious experience to live.
A prayer to pray: Dear God, thank you for giving me your Word to teach me about my own character. I pray that you change my heart to learn to depend on you and learn more of you. I want to have a personal relationship with you and pray that you may guide me into leaving behind the superficial and material that brings no fulfilment. Thank you for answering this prayer. In the name of Jesus. Amen
May God bless you abundantly!
Much love and smiles,
Nahisha :)
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