Exposing The Golden Calf Series

Preparing for this series, like any message that I give or group that I teach, is something that I have taken incredibly seriously. Over the last couple of months I've dedicated a substantial amount of time to thinking, praying, and considering how can I in my current role and this series best serve and love you and the community? When over the course of this series the Word of God, the Bible, is opened, I want you to know that I'm not just throwing something out there. I want to stress that these messages have been written with myself, and you all in mind, as well as the context and culture in which we live, and that this series has been written to serve you. And so it's my desire that over the next four weeks, we can grow closer into the fullness of what Christ desires for us. That's the aim of these messages and this series.

So now with that being said, let's talk about idols!

The Root Issue

We're going to start in Exodus 20. You may not know these verses word for word, but I'd be willing to bet that this passage will be pretty familiar to most if not all of you.

"And God spoke all these words, saying, 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lordblessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.'" - Exodus 20:1-17 (ESV).

Whether or not you have a background in church or not, I'd bet that you know that passage or have at least heard of it - the Ten Commandments. If you're around my age or a little older (I'm 31 at the time of writing this article), there's a chance that you may even remember these hanging up in a classroom at school. I don't know if you already knew this or not, but did you know that if you were to walk into the Supreme Court - the big one - in Washington D.C., did you know that over the building as you're coming in is an engraving of Moses holding the Ten Commandments? And then as you're walking into the Supreme Court on the big oak doors, the Ten Commandments are engraved there as well. Lastly, in the chamber where the justices will sit, on the South Wall we have again Moses carrying the - you guessed it - Ten Commandments.

So while it's evident that our country holds these principles dearly in the foundation of our legal system, Martin Luther, one of the fathers of the Protestant Reformation, said this about the ten commandments, and I thought this was really interesting: because the first two commands deal with idolatry:

Don't have any other gods before me

Don't make carved images of other gods and worship them and serve them

The rest of the commands are only broken if you break one of the first two. So what Luther is saying, is that:

If you steal.

If you dishonored your parents.