The Golden Calf Incident.

THE GOLDEN CALF INCIDENT.

Psalm 106:1-6, Psalm 106:19-23.

PSALM 106:1. It is good to raise our voices in praise to the LORD, our covenant God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. It is good to give thanks to the LORD for His goodness, by which He has washed us from our sins by the blood of Jesus, His Beloved Son. It is good to celebrate the LORD for His continued mercy towards us, which He will never remove.

PSALM 106:2. As we contemplate His mighty acts, wrought for the salvation of His people, we cannot but be impressed with them. We cannot even begin to show all the reasons why we should forever be praising the LORD. So the two questions of this verse remain unanswered meantime.

PSALM 106:3. Yet, if we were ever to find a person who could answer the two questions of the previous verse, it would have to be someone who enacted justice and righteousness “AT ALL TIMES.” Such a person would be truly blessed, having found happiness unsought in pursuing holiness. Yet Israel, we find in this Psalm, fell far short of this standard.

PSALM 106:4. Here the Psalmist gets personal, “Remember me O LORD.” But this is not without reference to the wider community of God’s elect: “with the favour that thou bearest unto thy (covenant) people.” The LORD deals with us as individuals, but the salvation that we receive places us in the wider community of the church.

PSALM 106:5. So the Psalmist continues, “That I may see the good of thy chosen” (by being one of them, and sharing in their joy and gladness). The happiest people in the world are the people whose God is the LORD. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ… To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved’ (cf. Ephesians 1:3-6).

PSALM 106:6. Whereas Psalm 105 spoke of the mighty acts and glorious deeds of the LORD, without reference to the sins of His people; Psalm 106 shows the other side of that coin. So it is appropriate here that the Psalmist begins with a corporate confession on behalf of his people, past and present: “WE have sinned with our fathers, WE have committed iniquity, WE have done wickedly.” Generation after generation the same old sins crop up in the midst of the LORD’s redeemed people!

PSALM 106:19. The very paradigm of such sins is the Golden Calf incident. After hearing the book of the covenant, the people asserted, ‘All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient’ (cf. Exodus 24:7); yet here they were at Horeb (which is Sinai) making themselves a golden calf from the gold that the Egyptians had given them at the time of their escape from slavery. They broke the second commandment when they “worshipped the molten image” (cf. Exodus 32:4).

PSALM 106:20. They exchanged the glory of God for some kind of fertility religion, based in the similitude of a grass-eating animal! The indictment against mankind for this kind of folly is echoed throughout the Bible (cf. Jeremiah 2:11-13; Romans 1:23). Anything that replaces the true and living God as foremost in our lives amounts to idolatry; and even today men worship, if not material idols, the idol of materialism: gold and the acquisition of wealth.

PSALM 106:21-22. How soon we forget our Saviour! How soon we forget the One who laid down His life for us, becoming sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:21)! How soon we forget the great things that God has done by the blood of Christ, conquering sin and death and hell; the world, the flesh and the devil on our behalf!

PSALM 106:23. “Therefore He said that He would destroy them,” but He did not. Instead Moses stood in the breach and interceded for them. Just as Jesus our Mediator also stands in the breach between God and man and intercedes for us (cf. Hebrews 7:25).