So, I’m waiting in line at that high end culinary experience, Taco Bell, and I get into a conversation with this woman. The conversation starts off with how crazy it is that Taco Bell can make fifty menu items out of only about seven ingredients and then moves on to Christianity. At one point this woman makes her statement to me about who she envisions Jesus to be, saying, “I think that Jesus can help us become more focused and successful in business, he is a good person to have on your side”. Then, a little later she went on to state her belief about prayer, “When I’m sick and I pray, I get better faster. It helps the body heal faster”. Finally, she summed things up with her philosophy of life, “As long as we don’t hurt others, everything is ok, that’s what Jesus would want us to do”.
She picked up her order and went on her way and I thought: “I just had another golden calf experience”.
I had another person give their version of who Jesus is and what Christianity was all about, and it was completely irrelevant that none of the facts added up.
Here in America we value our right to have an opinion about anything, and everything. This right to our own opinion permeates everything from how we feel about the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who should be eliminated and who should stay on, whatever reality show, to who Jesus is and how can Jesus help us out.
We are not necessarily interested in who God is; We are interested in who God is, for us.
This is exactly the kind of thing we see happening in our Scripture today. The Hebrews take what they highly value and create their version of who God is, and to them, it is completely irrelevant that the facts about who God is don’t add up. This, it turns out, does not please God.
We make the same mistake that the Hebrews did, and we do it over and over, we mold God into who we want Him to be, rather than seeking out who he truly is. I don’t know about you, but that is not where I want to be. I want to know who God is, and worship and serve the true God rather than something I have pieced together, a conglomeration of ideas about God that I like and feel comfortable with – No, I want reality, not a happy self creation! How do we avoid falling into the same trap that the Hebrews fell into? Let’s look at our Scripture and see what took place and how it applies to us today.
Looking at the beginning of chapter 32 in Exodus it appears that first glance the Hebrews have given up on the Lord God and are worshiping another God. It appears that they have simply created an idol shaped like a calf to replace the true God and are determined to worship it - But that is not exactly true. In their minds, the Hebrews are not replacing God, in their minds they are still following God, just in a different way.
Take a look at verse five, what does it say? Ex. 32:5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD.” The word “LORD” there that you see in your bible is the name “Yahweh” in Hebrew. What this is, is the proper name of God in the Old Testament, it means succinctly, “I Am”.
This whole deal. This golden calf, this festival, isn’t about some other god, no, everything they are doing is for the Lord God, Yahweh. These people are not against God. They are not trying to offend God, they are all about serving God….in their own way. Is that so bad? Apparently so.
As we start off here, I want to emphasize that these Hebrews are not attempting to change religions, or walk away from God – They are only attempting to reinterpret things a bit.
How did they get to this point? Everything was going so well in their relationship with God, and now, this mess. We saw back in chapter 20 that the whole nation was at the foot of mount Sinai and the voice of God spoke from the mountain, giving the people the Ten Commandments. The people hear the voice of God speak and they are terrified out of their minds. So, they all have heard the Ten Commandments, but they are not written down, and now Moses heads back up the mountain to receive the tablets from God.
A note about the tablets what the Ten Commandments were written on. We have stuck in our minds an image of the Ten Commandments as these two large pieces of stone with the Ten Commandments written on the front of each tablet, but this is most likely not the case at all. First, there was writing on both sides of the stones, see that in verse 15? There it says there was writing on both sides. Second, inscribing on tablets of stone was quite common at the time. The Egyptians would take flakes of stone chipped from rock and use the flakes for inscribing on. These stone flakes were usually about the size of your blackberry or iphone and could easily contain about 15-20 lines on each side. So, most likely, the Ten Commandments could fit right in your pocket. The Ten Commandments are meant to be mobile, they are meant to be taken with you at all times.
Also note that in verse 16 we see the Ten Commandments were the work of God, the writing of God on the tablets. Moses doesn’t create the tablets, God does – this is not philosophy from Moses, this is direct revelation from God.
So, since the Ten Commandments are not written down, Moses heads up the mountain to receive a copy from God. Moses walks away. Moses disappears. He is gone a long time. To the people camped at mount Sinai, it doesn’t seem like Moses is coming back. People, being people, they start to speculate, they start to talk amongst themselves. They look around and see that they are now stuck in the desert with no place to go. Where is this Moses fellow? They feel that they have waited long enough and it is now time to take action, now it is time to take matters into their own hands. There in verse 1 they feel that they don’t know what has happened to Moses, all they know is that Moses walked away, and has not come back. Maybe he’s dead, maybe he had enough, and just walked away.
“Well, how long do I wait?” is a question that I am asked a lot. We ask that question of God quite a bit don’t we? “How long is this going to continue? Which direction do I take Lord? Should I do this thing, or that thing?” The root of these kind if questions is this: What am I waiting for? At what point do you and I, stop this waiting thing, and just do something? When do we just get to work? That is a very pertinent question, and one that can be answered by Christian experience. It is a question that can be answered by the closeness of a relationship with God.
Last week, one of the things we talked about was the fact that God takes the spiritual growth in our lives and extends it, He stretches it out. What we hope would take a few months, God takes a life time; What we hope would get over and done with, God, slowly prods us along. And so over time, through the movement of the Holy Spirit in your life, you should be able to have a greater understanding of how long to wait. God’s time table for waiting is from a few minutes to, well…a lifetime.
What God will do, is give you ample opportunities to experience waiting on Him. With many of these opportunities you will, without a doubt, fail, and not wait long enough, and that’s ok, because let me let you in on a little secret….God has not come into your life to solve your problems, make you feel good and lift you up as a success, God has come into your life to have a relationship with you and for you to get to know Him well.
Remember last week I pointed out that it is far better to come before God without a single success and victory in your life and know Him well, than to lead a successful and victorious life. God is interested in relationship, not success….Look, success as a Christian is a close relationship with Jesus Christ, all other successes pale in comparison. So, practice waiting with God. Make those mistakes, learn to hear the Holy Spirit. Know God and become successful, don’t just accomplish stuff.
Now the Hebrews, can’t wait anymore, so they take matters into their own hands. The real problem is not that they are unable to wait anymore. The real problem is that they refuse to believe what God has reveled to them, and they create a god on their own terms – They create their own version of God, a god they are comfortable with, and they call it the real God. This is what ticks God off. This is what angers God.
God charges them with being corrupt. They were all together at the foot of Mount Sinai and they all heard God speak the Ten Commandments, they were all there, they were all frightened out of their minds, they all experienced the awesome mighty display of God’s power….but that was a few weeks ago. Now they are just waiting around…and for what?
Look, these are a group of insecure people. They had a strong leader. They had a person who helped them follow God, helped them figure out who God is – but he is gone and he may not be coming back. Now what? These people, they bleed their insecurity. Their insecurity compels them to seek cultural wisdom and forsake biblical wisdom. Their insecurity drives them to make foolish decisions, so they approach Aaron with a foolish proposal. Remember, it is not that they had a hard time waiting, it is what they did after they couldn’t wait anymore, and what they did was this: They ignored the biblical reality and chose the cultural reality instead. Verse 1, “Come, make us gods who will go before us.
Didn’t God recently tell them NOT to have other gods before him? Yes, but as I said at the beginning, this calf is not another god…in their minds. What they see themselves as doing is creating an image, a focal point, a site of interest, that rally’s the whole community…for what? Verse 5 – “a festival to the LORD.” Remember, the word LORD, refers directly to the real and only God.
Hey, they are used to having images of gods around them, they grew up with this kind of thing. So, Moses, he’s out of the picture, and this Moses was their link to God. They need another link, another mediator, so they create one. They think they are still worshiping God, and they worship like the pagan culture they came out of. Never mind that the festival they created had several violations of the Ten Commandments, this is what their idea of God is. They saw this kind of thing all the time growing up in Egyptian culture, so they emulate it.
See the bottom line here is this: Are you in your life as a Christian going to follow the biblical reality – or the cultural reality you live in? This is the choice that was set before the Hebrews, and they chose the cultural reality. It was familiar, it was fun, it was a good time – and everyone seemed to agree it was ok.
They only had ten items to follow, but the cultural pull was so strong, they turned away from it very quickly…and so do we.
You don’t think you do? You think you adhere to and understand the biblical reality surrounding the Ten Commandments? Maybe you do. Let’s look at one of the commandments briefly in its original biblical context and see if it matches what we as Americans believe.
Do not commit adultery. What does that mean? Here in America, most people would say that it means, “If you are married, do not have sexual relations with anyone besides your spouse”. If that is your definition of adultery, then you are working with an American cultural definition and not the biblical definition of adultery. For what the American cultural definition of adultery means is: People who are not married are free to have sexual relationships as long as they are not with someone who is married.
But biblically, adultery is having sexual relations outside the bounds of marriage – with anyone, period. In other words, if at anytime in my life if I have sexual relations before I am married, that is adultery, with anyone married or not married (yes even if it is with the person I will eventually marry). If I never marry and have sexual relations with anyone, married or not, it is adultery. If I have sexual relations with anyone after I am no longer married, yes, you guessed it, adultery. The only time it is NOT adultery is with my spouse, in the context of marriage.
That may surprise some of you. But you know, you’re an American, and you grew up in America, and well…frankly, we all need to know and understand our bible better. Look, we all are hammered with cultural definitions and we live by them, we see everyone else live by them too. Now, we may not act out these definitions, but, we accept them as the norm. The Hebrews, they were given the Word of God, spoken directly to them, they all heard it loud and clear, but they ignored it. They accepted the cultural understanding as the norm instead of God’s Word. Let us not fool ourselves this morning, we conveniently do the same thing too.
Now remember, Aaron is Moses’ brother, and he has been designated the priest for he Hebrews, so he is the one the Hebrews approach. We see in verse 2 that Aaron is right with them and he asks for what they value most and he creates this golden calf. On the cover of the bulletin we have a picture of the golden calf, but most likely, it wasn’t that large, most likely the calf was quite small. Why a calf? No one really is able to say just why they picked a calf? The calf was a popular representation of a god in pagan circles, but as a general rule the deity was depicted stand upon the calf rather than the calf being the image of the god. Whatever, the reason, whatever was going through their minds, they create this image and then plan a time of worship followed by brunch. After this time of worship to this calf (which keep in mind, they are calling the Lord God) they have a time of revelry.
In English that sounds like some dancing and singing. But the word used in the Hebrew means excessive drunkenness and, well, lets just say….loose sexual conduct with whomever they were camped by. But of course, they are doing all of this in the name of God, and to honor God, so it must be ok. No wonder God gets angry and tells Moses to get on down the mountain to stop this crazy thing. Moses, grabs the two tablets and heads down the mountain – Next week, we’ll see what happens to the Hebrews.
Let me end with this. We all have an idea of who God is, and what Christianity is all about. Now if we are honest with ourselves, we can say that each one of us, at some level, are effected by our culture, and our culture’s ideas of who God is and what Christianity is all about. And you know, that’s is where we are, and God He loves you for who you are at the place you are at right now in life.
But, we are to grow and mature spiritually, and our spiritual maturity is a long term experience. In this long term experience, God reveals Himself to you, all the Hebrews had at this point was the Ten Commandments, we have a lot more. We have the bible. Now I have said this before, but I’ll say it again. Here in our hands we hold the most accurate translations in the history of Christianity. The words of Jesus, you read in your bible, are almost without a doubt, exactly what Jesus said. Modern archeology and modern biblical scholarship has given us a profound gift.
We profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, others do not. For us, those who profess to follow Christ, the place to obtain our information about who He is and how to follow Him is not rocket science, is it? If I pay more attention to the cultural reality I am surrounded by more than the biblical reality revealed to me, then I am in great danger of creating a version of God, that isn’t God at all and what I may have is precious, golden and highly valued by it is not the holy God.
