If you're like me, I'm sure you grow weary of the same old routine. Perhaps you grow weary of the same old church routine. Maybe, the Israelites were growing weary of the same old faith routine in the desert. Maybe, they were sick of manna and quail. They didn't have the food network to offer them 500 different ways to prepare manna, so I'm sure their taste buds were a little bored with it.
My sister used to take me places when I was a kid and she would play tapes for me in her little red Chevette (not to be mistaken with Little Red Corvette). One artist she shared with me was the late, great Keith Green. One of his songs was So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt which is a humorous song about the Israelites being stuck in the desert and the events that transpired there. Towards the end of the song he shares suggestions of how the Israelites might have prepared manna in various ways such as manna waffles, manna burgers, manna bagels and perhaps even bamanna bread (my favorite). Regardless of the miraculous gift that manna was, I'm sure we could all imagine how the Israelites would take it for granted and how the miraculous could have become mundane for them.
I can't blame them for their boredom, perhaps not even for their impatience for Moses to get back, but what possessed them to worship a Golden Calf, let alone cause Aaron to make one? Well, bulls were associated with the worship of Baal, a local Canaanite god. So perhaps a calf is what Aaron came up with on the spur of the moment. Baal worship was also connected with fertility. So when it says they "partied" or "indulged in revelry," this "worship," at least in part, was an orgy. So it could be that they had observed some of the nearby neighborhoods' form of worship and were a bit curious about their practices.
It's also evident how much they equated their experiences of God with the presence of Moses. Thus, with him being gone so long, they took it as a sign of abandonment from God. This is no different today. How often do we desire a physical awareness of God? A sign of his presence? Did any of you ever pray something like this when you were a child? "Lord, if you could just give me some sort of sign" or "If you could just get me through (fill in the blank here), I would follow you unwaveringly forever." Perhaps we didn't use those exact words but you get the idea.
The intriguing, yet scary, picture we get in this scripture account is a peak behind the curtain, a bit of the mystery revealed of God as our Heavenly Father. God shows his anger at his Israelite children in Exodus 32:9-10. God appears to be angry enough to wipe out the Israelites. This brings back another childhood memory of listening to Bill Cosby comedy albums with my family on the record player. One of Cosby's classic lines was when he quoted what his Father would say when he was angry with his children. "I brought you in this world, I'll take you out" was Father Cosby's warning to Bill and his brother, Russell. NO matter how many times my dad heard that, he would always laughed at that line. I guess he could relate. In some ways as difficult as it may seem, a parent's misguided passion to blurt something like that out should be a sign of how great their love is for their child. Because in reality, an expression of indifference would be truly unloving, not an expression of anger. We as parents want our children to succeed so badly in all aspects of life that when we see them fall short, sometimes we allow our passions to get the best of us. Our anger rises. We use fear tactics or whatever we think it will take to get the message across to our children that we are disappointed and they need to do better.
Now consider things from God's point of view. Obviously, from our human perspective this is not easy. But we are made in his image and part of that image is that of parent. He is our supernatural parent and our creator. Being the parent of the entire human race is not a job I want to sign up for anytime soon. Yet we ask the question in His divine nature, did God really get that angry that he considered wiping them out? Perhaps from God's perspective this wasn't as bad a thing as we imagine. I don't pretend to know what God was thinking but perhaps God's perspective was if He ends their time on Earth and they joined Him in heaven, at least they would understand who their God really is. This is just conjecture, but surely we can understand from a human perspective that parenting a few is hard, let alone the entire human race.
I think what is more likely going on here is more foreshadowing of Christ. The narrative of Humankind, from Adam and Eve through to Abraham and his descendants on into the time of Moses, through David to the time of the prophets into Christ's time and on into the present all have one thing in common: the people's need for redemption, their need for a Savior. Was God's wrath which Moses successfully pleaded God to abstain from expressing, simply a wake up call to that need? I believe so, not only for the Israelites of that day, but for every generation that followed. We again see God balancing justice and mercy for the Israelites did not go unpunished as we see later in the chapter.
Perhaps the purpose of God's anger was twofold. Perhaps God's anger was a test of Moses as well. We observe Moses, this man who has grown so much in leadership, reminding God of his promise to Abraham and his descendants. This is the same man who not too long ago before this didn't think he could accept the call of leading the Israelites because he had a speech impediment (among other excuses). God knew Moses had become more and more like minded with Him. What hurt God's heart, hurt Moses' heart. So when Moses saw what they were doing, he threw down the tablets as if to say, "What good are these? You've already broken them." THe made them drink the powder of the idol they had worshiped and he called the Levites to arms. Moses became an object lesson of God's wrath but then when all is said and done he begs God for mercy on the people and offers to take their place for their punishment. Sound familiar? I never cease to be amazed at how glimpses of the Gospel to come shows up throughout the Old Testament.
A negative lesson can also be learned in Aaron. We see that Aaron is not quite there yet. When Moses confronts him in Exodus 32:21 Aaron sounds like a child diverting the blame to someone or something else. First he blames the people because they are so evil. Then, he out and out lies to his brother and says "I just threw the gold into the fire and out came this calf." I'm sure we all have come up with whoppers like this one in our day, but to read about Aaron, a grown man of 80+ years old, blaming a fire for his poor leadership of a people by encouraging them to blatantly break the 2nd commandment? I don't care who you are, that's ridiculously funny!
We can not embrace God's grace until we can come to terms with our need for it. In other words, we must confess, come clean and own up to our guilt. I see it in my children. I don't know how many times we've told Hannah to just come clean with the truth, but she will still try to pin it on her sister or she thinks the more adamantly she denies it, the more convinced we will be that she isn't really guilty. Somehow from an early age we learn the art of diversion, misdirection, casting a shadow on others in hopes that those whom we love and admire will still think of us as completely wholesome and innocent. But true growth in grace comes when we just come clean with others and with God. We are flawed. We are weak. We are sinful, but amazingly enough, God still wants to use us. He still used Moses. He still used Aaron. He still used the Israelites. And he still wants to use us by being living examples of what his grace can do in the lives of flawed, messed up people like me and you.
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