False Worship
How Worship that appeals to our liking may lead as stray
INTRO
You find a bag full of money. Of course you are happy. You think of all the things you can buy…. or pay. No name, no address, no way to trace the bag’s origins. You start spending the money, buying a new car, a new LCD High Definition TV, a new stereo, a new bed, etc. You still have a lot of money left, so you take the decision to put the rest of the money into the bank, so you can earn some interest, a sensible thing to do. But that’s when your apparently struck of luck turns sour. The bank sees that the money you have is counterfeit, not real, and they start enquiring as to where you got it, and what you have done with it. The police is brought in, and you have to return all the goods that you have bought, and worst of all, you become a suspect in the police investigation, since you can’t prove where you got the false money from.
This morning, we are looking at how the people of Israel, in order to have immediate self gratification, turned away from the Lord’s commands as to how to carry on with the worship of the Lord, and started to make up their own. The worst thing of all is that they deluded themselves into worshipping a statue, ‘honouring’ the Lord, but the Lord had rejected such worship in the first and second commandment. The anger of the Lord was against them, but Moses, their leader, the one they had said they didn’t know what had happened to him, interceded on their behalf and God didn’t give them their rightful punishment.
Two very different conversations
The Rejection of God’s appointed leaders, lead us to finally reject God Vss. 1-6.
Moses had been on the mountain around 40 days, and the people were getting anxious. Moses did not take a vacation from them; rather, Moses was receiving the Law to govern them from God. We can understand their desperation. They are in the desert, they need to move on, and maybe they think Moses is dead. They attribute Moses for bringing them out of Egypt, not God. (cf. vs. 7, where God says the same, but contrast it with vs. 11).
Aaron’s response to their request (vs. 2) is dismaying. Did he also think that his brother was lost? Or did he just give in to peer pressure? From verse 1, it seemed that they jump on him, and made such a request, and from past experiences, he was comprehensibly afraid of the people, cf. 15:24; 16:2; 17:1-4. Aaron’s instructions were to give the most precious metal they had, gold, in order to make an idol in the shape of a calf (picture 1). Having lived in Egypt form 430 years, it is not surprising that the people of Israel would ultimately represent their concept of God as a calf or a bull. The God Apis, in Egypt, was represented as a Bull. Baal in Canaan was also represented as a bull, and was an object of worship for Israel later on, cf. I Kings 12:28.
What we find here, it’s a total rejection of the Lord. The people proclaim the calf to be the god (dispute as to how to read it, plural or singular) who took them out of Egypt. They attribute God’s mighty works to a bull!!!!! Aaron’s runs along with this, proclaiming a festival to the Lord. The idea is that they thought that the calf represented the Lord, and therefore, deserved worship. The festival mentioned, has many links with the previous festival to the Lord in chapter 24. The main problem was that they had changed their leader, and finally, they had changed their God for a calf, and they were celebrating it, (Picture 2).
God’s anger is always superseded by his mercy
The second part of this conversation does not involve the people at all anymore, but it’s between God and Moses. The conversation at first is for the total destruction of the people of Israel due to their idolatry. God had commanded them no to cast idols in Ex. 20:4. They had proclaimed the calf to have them brought out of Egypt, which was not true according to Ex. 20:1. God, in his holiness, was correct to want to destroy the people of Israel. They had broken the commandments that he had given him, and his plan could still go on, since he would make a new people out of Moses.
Moses, far from being proud to have found such an honour, interceded on behalf of the people. He gives two reasons as to why God should not destroy the people. First. Because the Egyptians would attribute God the wrong motives for taking the people out of Egypt, vs. 12, and to fulfil the covenant to the ancestors of Israel.
The Lord relented, and heard Moses. This is not the first time that this happens, cf. Gen. 18:22-33; Amos 7:3, 6. Many explanations have been given about why God seems to change his mind. In the classical period, Christian theologians thought that God was speaking in human fashion. Calvin thought that God was testing Moses. But the best explanation that I have found is that God is not indecisive, rather, when God’s justice is tempered with mercy, and that when the two qualities clash the former yields before the later.
These things occurred as examples for us…
There is a reluctant in some circles to day as to the moral value of Scripture. The saying goes that we cannot learn anything from the lives of the characters of the Bible because they are all faulty and fall short of the perfect image of God. I beg, along with the apostle Paul, to disagree. Paul refers to this incident in I Cor. 10, and specifically vs. 7. Stephen also points to this situation in his recollection of how stiff necked the Israelites have been through out their history, Acts. 7:38.
But we also fall into the same patter of thinking and behaving as the Israelites. Our Moses, Jesus, is up in heaven interceding on our behalf, but because we don’t see him, we turn our impatience and frustration to the one we consider to be his representative for us here on earth, mainly the pastor or the leadership of the church. We sometimes find the church boring, and want to import new, and ‘innovative’ ways to praise and worship God, but at the end, we end up pleasing our selves (café church for example). Willow Creek did an internal survey, and found out that they were so engrossed in bringing seekers in, that the congregation did not grow spiritually, because they had watered down the gospel, and came up as to what is known today as “Christianity light”.
But worst of all, we may have our own golden calves hidden in our hearts. Because they look good and innocent, we may think they won’t affect our worship, just as Aaron did, (Two reverend fun pictures). What are those golden calves, can it be Money? Your House? Work? Your car? Health? Your family, including pets? Your church????
We don’t see Jesus today, but we know what he has done for us. (picture of Jesus carrying the Cross) There’s no reason to doubt that he won’t do what he has promise to do for us.
It has been said, that root of idolatry is when men think that God is not present, unless they see him physically. As with the Israelites, they needed to see something shining, beautiful to see God, but the best representation of God that is shown in the bible is the cross of Christ, (final two pictures). This is not a good sight, but it is the one that God shows his glory, and what he has done for us, saving us from our sins, and giving us eternal life.
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