Make Us A God
Introduction
Exodus 32
Open your bibles with me this morning to Exodus chapter 32. We are continuing our study of the journey the Israelites take from captivity to liberty, from being a nation of prisoners to being a kingdom of priests.
As our story opens, Moses has gone up the mountain to continue receiving instruction from the Lord. The people are camped at the foot of the mountain. When last we saw them, back in chapter 24, they were covered with the blood of the covenant. Moses had taken half of the blood of the peace offering and thrown it on the altar and the other half he had sprinkled on the people so as to cover them, and to remind them that their sins were costly and that as a people, they belonged to God. In response, they had promised to do all the Lord had commanded them, and to obey.
To the uninitiated reader, chapter 32 comes as somewhat of a shock. God has shown Himself to be faithful; He has shown Himself to be true. He has kept His promises to them and provided for them at every point along the way. He has revealed Himself majestically and with unmistakable power. No one can question whether or not He is real. He has humbled the most powerful nation on earth, the Egyptians, and has proven that all of their gods are false. God has been faithful.
And up to this point, while the people have at times been cantankerous and disgruntled, on the whole they have not broken out in abject disobedience to God. But here, in what is one of the most incredible acts of defiance and rebellion in all of scripture, the Israelites, just a few short weeks after ratifying their covenant with God, goad Aaron into making a golden calf and they bow down and worship it, and in so doing, violate several of the commandments they had solemnly sworn to obey.
While it would be easy for us to point fingers at the Israelites and condemn them for their foolish actions, as always, we must be careful. Much of what they do here at the foot of Mt. Sinai is reflective of basic human nature, something we unfortunately share with them. Thus, as we shall see, many of their actions are no worse than some of the things many so-called Christians do today.
Let’s begin in verse 1 of Exodus 32:1-35. Our focus today will be on verses 1-6 where we find the Israelites falling into the sin of Idolatry.
All of us who have seen Cecil B. DeMille’s movie, The Ten Commandments, have a visual picture here of what is going on. But, as is always the case, the scripture is much more descriptive than that which can be portrayed on film.
Notice with me several things which the Israelites do in these first six verses, and how closely they relate to things we, as modern-day Christians, have a tendency to do. Let’s begin in verse 1.
I. They Grew Impatient with God
Contextually we need to go back to chapter 24 verses 12-18.
It is instructive to note that Moses instructs the elders to wait till he and Joshua return and he leaves Aaron and Hur in charge, telling them that in his absence they will be in charge.
So it’s not like they did not have instructions, it’s not like they were not told to wait or that they had somehow been led to believe Moses would be back soon, to the contrary, they had been instructed to wait.
But now, look at verse 1 again. The passage tells us that the problems started when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain. He did not come down within the timeframe they envisioned, and they grew impatient with God. Sometimes we grow impatient with God as well.
There are several things which happen when we grow impatient with God.
A. Forgetting the Past and Focusing on the Present
First of all, when we grow impatient we have a tendency to forget the past and focus only on the present.
Sometimes we call this the tyranny of the urgent. When we grow impatient we have a tendency to act irrationally and to put our better judgment aside. This was what the Israelites had done. It seems apparent that they had forgotten all the miraculous signs and wonders God had done; they had forgotten their covenant with God; they had forgotten the difficulties of slavery from which He had rescued them and all they could focus on was the present.
While the past should not be a hitching post, it is most certainly a guidepost. It should serve to give us a context as to where we are, how we got here, who brought us here and what His purpose was in bringing us here. When we grow impatient with God we position ourselves for failure because we have begun to walk down a pathway which will lead us to trust ourselves rather than trusting God.
And that’s the second thing that happens when we grow impatient with God: we try to take matters into our own hands.
B. Taking Matters into Our Own Hands
Secondly when we grow impatient, we often take matters into our own hands.
Look at the rest of verse 1. “Make us a god who will go before us.”
In their impatience, in their inability to wait on the Lord and to trust Him to speak to them in His own time, they assemble around Aaron and persuade him to make them an idol, a false god, one which they can see, one which they can touch, all because they are unwilling to wait on the one true God.
We live in a society which does not value waiting. Ours is a culture which exalts speed and expedience. The quicker something can be done, the better. The faster your computer, the faster your car, the faster the restaurant can get you in and out, the better. It seems things haven’t changed much in several thousand years. They could not wait on the Lord. They grew impatient and decided they could do it better than God could. They wanted action and they wanted it now.
If you’ll look back on your own experience, you may well be able to see that many of your problems in life, many of the heartaches and pains you have suffered along life’s journey, many of the biggest pits you have fallen into began when you grew impatient with God and took matters into your own hands. This is what the Israelites did, and it is something we have a tendency to do. But not only did their impatience cause them to be forgetful of the past and lead them to take matters into their own hands, notice with me that impatience with God causes us to be easily led astray.
Look at verse 8, “they have turned aside quickly from the way which I commanded them.”
C. We are Easily Led Astray
They are easily led astray.
When we grow impatient with God, when we haven’t the faith to wait on Him and His perfect timing, we become vulnerable to things we would otherwise never consider.
Think about the businessman who has prayed and prayed for God to open the door of opportunity and God has told him to wait. One day he grows tired of waiting and yields to the temptation to do business in a way which he knows is dishonoring to God, all because he could not wait on the Lord.
Or think about the Christian girl who has prayed and prayed for a godly husband, and the weeks turn into months and the months turn into years, and one day she grows weary of waiting on the Lord and marries a non-believer, all because she could not wait on the Lord.
When we grow impatient with the Lord we often do things we have sworn not to do; we often violate promises we have promised not to violate. When we grow impatient with the Lord we begin to grasp any and every thing that promises to do what we want, and in so doing we are often led astray.
But there is a larger issue here, an overarching problem with their impatience, one which speaks directly to where each of us live. You see, when we grow impatient with God it is usually because we have stopped trusting Him. Our impatience is evidence of our lack of faith. When we grow impatient with God it is because we have lost our faith.
God values faith and faith necessitates waiting. By the very act of our impatience we are telling Him that He does not know best, that we do not have the faith to trust Him and to wait on Him to accomplish His will in His time. Our impatience tells God that we don’t feel He can be trusted to do what He said He will do.
The issue here is that of faithlessness. The Israelites have lost faith in God. They have failed to see that with God faith is an absolute necessity. It is not optional.
Hebrews 11:1-2 tells us that faith is the “Assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
When we grow impatient with God and forget all He has done, begin to take matters into our own hands and begin to do things we would otherwise never do, it is all because of a lack of faith. Impatience with God is, in the final analysis, nothing more than a lack of faith, an unwillingness to trust God to do what He said He would do and to leave the timing up to Him.
But not only did the Israelites grow impatient with God, there is a second thing I would have you notice here.
II. They Made Themselves an Idol
Look in verses 2-4.
There are two things I want you to notice about this false God they made themselves.
The first is what it was made of. They made it from the gold God had given them. They made it from something God had given them to be a blessing in their life. They misunderstood why God had blessed them and thus misused that blessing. When we set up false gods in our lives, more often than not we make them from the blessings God has given us. They come out of our misunderstanding of why God has blessed us and what we are to do with His blessings.
They take the gold that, back in chapter 12:36 was given to them because God caused them to have favor with the Egyptians, and they make it into a false god. The very blessing which God had caused them to receive becomes the thing which they form into an idol, which becomes a curse in their midst. In fact, as we read through the book of Exodus we understand that the gold God gave them was given to them so that they could construct the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. It is interesting to note that the very thing with which they were to worship God, becomes the thing which they end up worshiping instead of God.
When we are tempted to place something above God in our lives, more often than not it will be something which God has given to us to be a blessing in our lives. For many people the money God has entrusted to them to use for His kingdom’s advancement becomes the idol which causes them to stumble. Others begin to idolize their family or their career or something else which God has given them to be a blessing. But in each case, they turn a blessing into a curse, they begin to focus on the gift rather than the giver and this becomes an idol in their lives.
It is also interesting to note that Moses burned it and ground it up and made them drink it. When we misuse God’s blessing and make it into an object of our worship, we cannot expect to ever enjoy it as a blessing again.
But there is a second thing I want you to see, and that is what drove them to make an idol and to worship it. I mean, what in the world would have caused these people to want to worship a golden calf? Who in their right mind, after having seen their God humiliate the false gods of Egypt, would want to worship one of those false gods?
The answer is a bit more complex than you might think. Primarily, it has to do with worldview. It is important for us to understand the power of a worldview. Each of us, whether we can enunciate it or not, has a worldview. You have one and I have one. Basically our worldview consists of the filters through which we see our world. As Christians our worldview, or the way in which we see our world, is to be shaped by scripture and our relationship with God who lives in us through His Spirit. God’s word is our source of truth and the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to understand it. By allowing God’s word to be our guide and act as a filter in our lives, we know right from wrong, truth from falsehood, and are able to see and understand the world from God’s point of view.
The Israelites have just been out of Egypt for a matter of months now. The worldview in which they were born and raised was one which embraced idolatry as the norm. The Egyptians and all the nations in the land of Canaan were idolaters. This was the norm for everyone they knew. God was giving them His written word; He was revealing Himself to them in powerful and mighty ways, so as to give them a new worldview, a new way of looking at reality. And yet, when they became discouraged with God, when they grew weary of waiting on Him to fulfill His purpose and plan, they reverted back to their old way of thinking. They slipped back into the idolatry that was the norm around them. They proved that why they were physically out of Egypt, a part of Egypt was still in their hearts.
In short, they allowed the nations around them to influence them more than they allowed God to direct them. The concept behind idolatry was that the idol represented the God who was being worshiped. The presence of the idol insured the presence of the god they were worshiping.
By making a golden calf, which they clearly sought to identify with Yahweh God, they violated the 2nd commandment. In making an idol, they sought to manipulate God’s presence and confine Him and define Him by the image of a young bull. This was exactly what God had expressly forbidden. He had told them not to do this because He was not like the false gods of Egypt. He could not be confined or defined, as God is omnipresent and transcendent. You see, the problem was one of worldview, when they thought of God they were still filtering their thoughts through the worldview of the nations around them, the worldview in which they had been born and raised. In creating an idol they failed to recognize God for who He was and is. We run the same danger today, of allowing someone or something other than God to define God for us and of allowing that definition to shape our worldview.
The world in which we live wants to define God. Usually they see Him as a kindly old father who wound up the world as a clock and lets it run, or they see Him as a capricious, implacable despot who cannot be pleased and who takes pleasure in stealing our fun. Think about how Hollywood has tried to portrait God, in movies like Bruce Almighty, or Oh God. Everywhere you and I turn there are people trying to tell us who God is and what He is like. They are trying to shape our worldview by defining God for us.
But there is only one source for defining God; there is only one source for forming our worldview and that is the word of God. It alone is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. It alone is inerrant and unmixed truth. That is why as Christians, if we are going to know God and worship Him in Spirit and in truth, we must know the word of God and hide it in our hearts. We must resist the temptation of allowing anything or anyone other than God to shape our understanding of who He is. This includes our emotions or our experiences. God alone reserves the right to reveal Himself to us.
They made themselves an idol and worshiped it as a god.
But there is a third thing we must notice in this text. Not only did they grow impatient with God and build themselves a false god but notice with me in verses 5 and 6 that their impatience and impudence led them to false worship.
III. They Practiced False Worship
Note verses 5 and 6.
They built an altar before the idol; Aaron proclaims a feast to the Lord. What’s this? A feast to the Lord, and they offer burnt offerings and peace offerings? It looks a lot like the same kind of worship they would have given to God Himself. I mean, if one did not know they were worshiping an idol, one might think they were worshiping God.
You see, misunderstanding and misusing that which God has given us, and having a wrong view of who God is, invariably leads us to false worship, worship which is so similar to real worship that it is easy to confuse the two.
It is interesting to note how Aaron makes an attempt to infuse some of the same elements of true worship into this idolatry. Perhaps by so doing he wanted to convince himself and some of the others that he was not really worshiping an idol but was really worshiping God.
One of the most insidiously beguiling things about idolatry is that we often convince ourselves that what we are doing is really worshiping God. By going through the feast, and making the burnt and the peace offerings, they were imitating orthodoxy, or true worship, through idolatry.
Idolatry rarely ever presents itself as being pagan or false. In fact, most often it presents itself as being nothing more than an alternative way of worshiping God. It looks, feels, and sounds enough like real worship that it is easy to confuse the two. But there is a vast difference between false worship and real worship.
Conclusion
Allow me to give you five things about false worship that should help you evaluate what kind of worship you are giving to God.
A. False Worship is Self in Control Versus God in Control
False worship enables us to control God rather than God controlling us. Verse 4, “He fashioned it…”
Aaron fashioned it with his own hands. Folks, it is God who has made us and not we who make God. It is God who is in the process of shaping us, of conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ, not we who are shaping God to our image. False worship always allows us to shape God into any image we like, to define Him in terms with which we are comfortable. Real worship never enables us to be comfortable. It always challenges us, always confronts us with how holy God really is and how sinful we really are. True worship is anything but comfortable. In authentic worship we are forced to submit to His control absolutely and without any reservation at all. Any worship that enables you to control God or to conform Him to your own liking is false worship.
B. False Worship Violates God’s Commands
False worship always violates God’s commands but makes excuses to try and justify itself. Verse 21-24
This is a fascinating picture. Moses confronts Aaron about having given into the desire of the people and having made an idol for them, and what does Aaron do? He gives one of the lamest excuses in all of scripture. Look at verse 24. In essence he says, “Hey, they gave me the gold, I threw it in the fire and presto, out came this calf, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
False worship always leads us to make excuses as to why we had to violate God’s commands. It always leads us down the slippery slope of rationalization and excuse giving. It causes us to want to try and justify our actions which, in our hearts we know are wrong. If you are constantly looking for ways to justify what you are doing, if you are always having to give excuses for the way you are living, friend, your worship is false, you are living a lie and it’s time to be honest about it.
C. False Worship Gives God’s Glory to Another
Verse 4, “These be thy gods which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.”
False worship always exalts something or someone above God. It is always placing the focus on and giving the credit to the wrong source. Make no mistake about it, in true worship God and God alone gets the glory. You are not what you are and do not have what you have because of how good you are. If left to your own devices you would have messed it up long ago. You are what you are and enjoy the blessings you have because God is good and God is great, and that’s the end of it. A life that is lived in authentic worship is one which constantly credits God for His goodness and does not credit self.
If you think you’ve done it, you haven’t yet figured out what true worship is. True worship always gives God the glory. False worship always gives God’s glory to someone or something else.
D. False Worship Leads to Going Through the Motions of True Worship
False worship enables us to go through the motions of a worship event without demanding an ongoing life change. Verse 6b.
The Israelites did not want to encounter the living God. They were too afraid of Him. We have seen from chapter 24 that they did not want to speak with Him themselves, they wanted an intermediary. In fact, they did not want to have to be accountable to God. They wanted to go through the motions of religious worship without having to have a life change.
How reminiscent is this of so many people today who call themselves Christians. Week after week they go through the motions of religious worship but then, once they are out of the church service, they go back to living like they want to live. They don’t want changed lives; they want plausible deniability. They want to say they have worshiped God so as to assuage their guilty conscience, but they don’t want to be transformed.
Folks, true worship is always recognizable by the ongoing transformation in one’s life. False worship is always event oriented, that is, it is nothing more than ceremony. True worship is always life changing.
E. False Worship Leads to Bad Practices
False worship always leads to bad practices. Verse 6b. The scripture says they ate and drank and rose up to play. The word translated “to play,” speaks to revelry and partying. It is the same word used in Genesis 39:17 where Potifer’s wife falsely accuses Joseph of sexual misconduct. It speaks of unrestrained behavior.
Clearly, the false worship led to bad practice. False worship is based on false beliefs and when you believe the wrong thing you will invariably do the wrong thing and feel justified in doing it.
This is one of the greatest dangers of false worship: it leads us into sin and sin separates us from God.
The Israelites began by being impatient. They began by not trusting God to do what He had promised to do and their impatience led them to fashion a god after their own liking and the worship of that false god led them into sin and sin would invariably lead them into God’s punishment, because nothing escapes His sight.
What is it you are waiting upon God to do? What is it He has promised you that you are tempted this morning to take into your own hands? Wait on Him. They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they shall run and not grow weary they shall walk and not faint. Wait for his timing and it will be perfect. Don’t take matters into your own hands.
Who is shaping your worldview? Where have you gotten your vision of God? Is it something you’ve learned from someone else, or have you gotten it from scripture and a personal relationship with God through Jesus? Life is too short, and eternity is too long to allow the wrong person or thing to shape your view of God and the world He has made.
What kind of worship do you practice? Is it authentic? Does it demand all you are and constantly conform you to the image of Christ?