S136P2 – Pervasive sin: not-so-subtle idolatry

Exo. 32:1-4

Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”  And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”  So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron.  And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf.  Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!”

As we live out our faith, we will see how the natural or physical so often conflicts with the spiritual.  We are asked to put our faith in that which we cannot see or touch.  We are asked to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which we have not witnessed.  Likewise, a large part of our faith and hope hinges on waiting.  We suffer today and wait for God to relieve us.  We remain in imperfection today and wait for him to perfect us on that day.  We sow now and reap later.  Waiting develops patience, which is necessary to serve God faithfully, but it also incites the flesh, if we let it.  Where God would use the waiting for our good, we are tempted to let it break us and give birth to sin.

This passage tells us how the Israelites failed to wait faithfully on Moses, but they were really waiting on God.  Moses was not in control of what he was doing on the mountain but was simply following as the Lord directed.  As they waited and did not see evidence of God working or moving, they decided to make their own god to take his place.  They prefered to have a false god with no power physically before them than to wait in silence for a word from the real God.  They chose the poor substitute because they simply could not fight the fleshly desire to be satisfied now.  They not only built a substitute, but they attributed to that idol the salvation they received from God himself.

The inability of Israel to wait on the Lord had a very drastic impact on their faith and worship.  In deciding to make their own way by creating their own god, they stopped worshipping him altogether.  There is no lesser degree of straying; they completely strayed.  That is what happens when we let the flesh keep us from waiting faithfully for God.  We create our own idol and rely on that.  To wait on God and trust in him to make a way will require that we fight the desire of the flesh to follow any other way that seems better now.  Father, help us to fight the impatience and doubt that would cause us to put our hope and trust in anything but You simply because we must wait.